[YouTube channel doing AI audio narration of ABDL stories]

5 hours ago, Cute_Kitten said:

The only thing I can think of is to put them on blast all across ABDL social media and hopefully get the word out.  It really sucks- the least they could do is link to an author's page or story or at the very least give credit.  But they really should ask first!  

Cheeky Charlie did a reading of my story Winter's Kiss (and he did a fabulous job!) and he asked permission! That's the way to do it. 

Full agree.  

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

7 hours ago, Panther Cub said:

Okay, the goat milk being switched with mommy milk has got my brain juices flowing. Mind if I reference Unfair and this particular practice in a Diaper Dimension story idea I came up with? (Giving you total credit, of course!)

If you want?  Sure.  But I don't think I need credit.  It's not that "Mommy Milk" is being sold in grocery stores.  It's that Janet got goat milk and at some point (probably fairly early on) she just started expressing her milk into bottles, and let the cartons/jugs of goat milk create a psychological association and then just keep mislabeling.  

If you WANT that to be an industry in your DD fic, go for it.  Just not what happened here. So you wouldn't be copying me.

And if you ARE copying me, I don't need credit for that part.  That's just an old school "parenting trick" I grew up with dialed up to 11.  "Eat this thing, it's something you like.  Like it, right?  Well it's not really the thing you like, but you wouldn't have eaten the new thing it if I'd told you what it is."   That's like crediting me for putting someone in a diaper.

[YouTube channel doing AI audio narration of ABDL stories]

I mean, the reason the comments are turned off is because the people turning off comments, suck.  

[YouTube channel doing AI audio narration of ABDL stories]

Yeah. They do me too.  They don't even credit mine under the right title.  It's just "Diaper Dimension Scene". 

And I'm in the same boat with the same limitations.  Not sure what to do.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

Chapter 112: Lie to me

(Years and years and years ago…)

I sat at the dinner table, shirt cleanly pressed and buttoned up, hair neatly combed with hair and face washed. I was years away from being able to grow a goatee.  I looked down at the plate in front of me.  Besides the familiar yet detestable broccoli that had been steamed without any cheese was some kind of cut up meat dish. It was pale and pinkish like my flesh, but basted in an unfamiliar brown sauce.  Some kind of chicken, obviously, but not the good kind with the skin coated in breadcrumbs so that it crunched when I bit into it. Turkey maybe?  Duck? Probably not duck. Mother never cooked duck, I just knew it was an option from T.V. and movies.

It was hard to tell when cooking with Amazon portions.  We could eat a single bird for several meals but everything was cut, chopped, diced, and pulled beyond recognition by the time it made it to the plate. Even in a fairly well-to-do Little family, we ate scraps.  Scraps were what would fit in our mouths.

Either we’d cut the food to ribbons and eat it, or an Amazon would do it for us.  Just a fact of life.

The stuff on my plate looked soft and mushy; practically baby food. Gross!  Or perhaps it’d be rubbery and chewy like a dog toy, something I’d have to chew again and again and again, grinding it with my teeth but the stuff never wanting to go down the back of my throat so that I’d have to wash it down with milk just to be able to swallow. Just like with carrots, green beans, and a host of other vegetables my seven year mouth detested unless cooked just right, I’d inevitably tank up on milk, be too full to finish, and then not be allowed to have dessert.

Such was life at seven years old.

It smelled weird, too, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Not burnt, but smokey. “What’s this?”  I asked. I poked some of the meat with my fork and it fell apart at the touch. I recoiled in surprise, as if it were still alive and I’d just delivered the death blow myself.

“Just eat it, Clark,” my father said. He cut at a tender piece and popped into his mouth.  Balding and snowy haired, he wiped his mouth with a napkin after every bite, save when sipping from his mug of beer.  “It’s good for you.’

“I just want to know what it is,” I insisted.  False.  What I really wanted was a burger.  Something that I could grip my hands and bite into.  Something to drench in dairy and ketchup; fill up on juicy ground beef while tasting cheese and condiments.

“Chicken,” Father said.

I poked at the stuff again.  I grabbed my fork and started sawing through a piece.  The stuff melted on the fork, the knife being formality and pantomime more than anything.  “What kind of chicken?” I stalled.  

“It’s swill,” my mother said.  “Now eat it.”

“Debra…” my father looked across the dinner table.

Mother brushed a bit of frizzled red hair out of her eyes. “Ward…” she shot back at my father.  She ate some of the strange concoction and then pointed with her fork.  “Eat your swill, Clark.”

“What’s swill?”  

“Eat it and find out.”

“What is it?”

“Take three big boy bites,” she said. “Then decide whether you like it.”

“Mooooooooom,” I whined.  “I just want to know what it is!”

“Three big boy bites,” she repeated evenly.

I threw my head back and lightly bonked the back of it against the chair. 

I hated it when my parents used baby talk on me. It wasn’t meant to be demeaning, but a reminder; a warning of sorts. Young men and women who didn’t listen to their mother and fathers’ sage advice would inevitably draw the attention of new Mommies and Daddies who wouldn’t let them ever grow up. 

It was the same for table manners, bed wetting, thumb sucking, academics, speech impediments, household chores, and personal grooming. We developed good habits, lest bad ones become permanent in the worst possible ways.  When growing up is literally something you can fail at, it becomes a skill to be practiced like any other rather than something to let happen naturally on its own.  Grow up well so you can find a safe job, save money, get married, have kids, teach them to do the same, and retire safely away.

“I'm just asking a-”

“Do I need to help you practice opening up for the airplane?” she asked.

“Fine!” I shoveled the pulled bird meat into my maw and chomped down.

And smiled!

It was delightful!  The stuff fell apart in the best way on my tongue. The brownish not quite pasty sauce was even better than ketchup and had a hearty sweetness that complimented the savoriness of the meat instead of clashing with it. I actually hummed in delight.  “MMMMMMMMMMM!”

I went so far as to spear some pieces of broccoli so that it’d go down easier with the delicious, delicious stuff!  A young man could get used to this!

“What do you think?” My mother asked, sounding hopeful.

“I love this swill!” I proclaimed.

My father laughed, low and deep, then took a sip of beer. My mother nodded appreciatively.  “I’m glad you like it dear. Now eat your swill.” 

So I did.

We had ‘swill’ twice a month in the Gibson household growing up.  Mother was keen to take note of meals that her picky husband and pickier son would wolf down. It was easily one of my favorite dishes of hers.

I’d never heard the word before in my young life. I’d no context for what it meant.  No clue that it was a synonym for literal slop fed to Erymanthian bred pigs. My mother was just tired from working all day and cooking for an ungrateful son, so she made a quip as her own private joke. 
Calling it what it was to my basic ass wouldn’t have accomplished her goal of getting me to eat the goddamn chicken so she picked a word out of her head; most likely reflective of how she felt I took her cooking for granted.

 When I fell in love with it, the name stuck. It was mostly because she found it funny, but also if I didn’t know what it was I couldn’t look up or find a recipe for it.  Calling the stuff ‘swill’ made it magical in a way, her own special spin on a relatively simple slow cook dish.

Five whopping years later we went out to a barbecue joint and she suggested I try the barbecue smoked chicken. I hadn’t tried barbecue before, and chicken seemed so common to my ever expanding middle school palette. Then she promised me that it would taste like ‘swill’ and it finally clicked.

“About time,” my dad said softly after the Tweener waitress took our orders. “Wouldn’t want him to accidentally tell some Amazon his parents fed him swill.  That could get all of us in trouble.”

*********************************************************************************************************

Wedging the bottle between my good and bandaged hand, I sucked down Beouf’s coffee in my car seat. Janet opted to sign out and go home as soon as the last of the buses had driven off but Melony cooked me up a batch of our afternoon snack and handed it to me on our way out the door. Today’s brew tasted of caramel macchiato and victory.
  
I’d committed not one but two hypothetically grievous offenses, and my friends had used their own crazy backwards logic and ingenuity to drop hints to me so that I was rewarded with a three day vacation instead of sentenced into exile.  

How cool was that?!

Even better was that I was once again a made man in the eyes of the A.L.L and the other Littles in my class.  I’d punched an Amazon in the face, drew blood, and would be back on Friday. I wasn’t even close to a cautionary tale! I was a mother fucking legend! No one there could doubt my credentials! 

It also meant Ivy would be treated better without me having to give away her secret or connive an excuse as to why the most mindfucked among us should be treated with kid gloves. Enough had seen and heard her part in it, and my word would carry more weight than it ever had! 

 Who would doubt the dedication and judgment of Clark Gibson: Giant Killer? Maybe, just maybe, I could weasel my way back into potty training again. Oh nice it would be to walk around without the plastic rustle of a Monkeez or Koddles or Hippobottomuses around my waist. 

I closed my eyes and sucked thoughtfully on what was basically hot chocolate with some coffee grounds mixed in, basking in the combination of future based fantasy and recent triumph.  There was an earthy bitterness that the creamer, sugar, and syrup, all but covered up that made them taste all the sweeter. The hint of coffee, the hint of liquid adulthood, made all the other ingredients better.  

Though there was something to be said about the almost relaxing rush of adding sweetener to something already sweet, like vanilla syrup in fatty goat’s milk. That had been an experience, I’d have to try again, I decided. Good thing Janet had some ready. I wondered if chocolate syrup would have tasted as good. 

Wait a minute…

Something about that wasn’t right. Something was off and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Janet?” 

Janet made eye contact with me in the rear view mirror.  “Yes, honey?”

“I had a bottle of goat’s milk this morning, right?”

“Mhm. Why?”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something had happened this afternoon that really bothered me in hindsight. “No reason.”  

That was a lie, both to myself and her. Deep down, I had the worst feeling of something gnawing at me in the back of my brain.  It snapped at me and snarled, baring its teeth, and I was too afraid to look at it and touch it, knowing it was going to bite me.

I’d seen her pour the goat milk from the carton into the bottle.  Watched her drink some right in front of me.  Just like I’d had Beouf do for her stupid candies.  The water was always right from the tap and the coffee was straight from a shared pot! 

That first sip of milk had been many bottles ago, though; many cartons.  We’d gone through that original carton quickly.  Janet had gotten others since, but they lasted much longer.  Even though she was filling the bottles up regularly out of sight…

“Janet, can I ask you something?”

Janet kept her eyes on the road. “After we get home, baby. We need to have a serious talk.”

I didn’t press it. I didn’t want to press it.

“Okay…”

On Picture Day, Jessica had taken a swig from one of my bottles and almost gagged from surprise. Janet had apologized profusely to her the next day over the phone…

To herself, Janet muttered something along the lines of “Two steps forward, one step back.”  She had no idea.

Even before the weather started to turn chilly, Janet had taken to wearing cardigans. More than once she’d hurried out of the room when Littles started shouting, crossing her arms over her chest and running out the door as if embarrassed…

I needed to break the silence in the car and the building symphony in my head.  “How mad are you?”

 I’d caught myself doing double takes sitting in the grocery cart, wondering if she’d gained weight or if her boobs had always been so big. Same for when we showered together…

The car was slowing down, we were turning into Janet’s neighborhood.  “If you’re asking if you’re in trouble, you better believe it, bud. I still love you,” she added, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna have consequences for what you did today.”

A doctor had written her a prescription; except the doctor was supposedly a pediatrician for Littles; one who had been particularly focused on getting me to breastfeed…

“Almost home,” Janet said, not unkindly.

Every Amazon around me said ‘goat’s milk’ with just an edge of hesitation.  Maybe guilt. Maybe code. Maybe both. They’d spoken with the same care used when adults spelled words they didn’t want children to hear….

“Yup…” I said.

But what happened when the child could spell?  You just made up a different word…

We pulled into her garage. I was unbuckled from the car seat and was trembling on her hip. Janet’s eyebrows knitted together and she placed a warm hand on my forehead. ”No fever,” she said. But she knew something was up.

How long?  How long had something been going on?  Was I even sure something was going on?

She carried me into the kitchen straight away and plopped me down into the highchair.  No restraints this time, just the tray.  She wanted to talk to me and look me in the eye without holding me. This was decidedly not a lap conversation.  She pulled her usual chair and positioned it directly in front of me so that we were nearly at eye level.

“So, a few things,” Janet began with a rehearsed rhythm. “I’m very proud of a lot of what you did today, okay?”

I was sitting as far back in that highchair as I could.  My skin was burning.  With what? I wasn’t sure. “Okay…”

“You’re a very smart boy,” Janet praised. “You knew when to be quiet, when to listen, and when to talk. You were perfect in the clinic and in the office.”

Just this Saturday, Janet had said the Yamatoan word for goat’s milk. Ivy used that same word just before suckling at her mother’s breasts…

“Hmmhmm...”

I’d already had dreams about it like my unconscious mind was trying to scream it at me…

“And you’re a very sweet, sweet, loving boy.  I know you just wanted to protect your old student.”

Fuck!  Why did she have to call Elmer my former student?  This wouldn’t be nearly as difficult if she stuck to the narrative that we’d fed Brollish.  Called Elmer ‘my friend’ or something.  

 “Yeah,” I mumbled.

“And Ambrose? She deserved it.”

Hell yeah she did! Damn it! Why?!  “But…?”

“But what you did was very very impulsive and very very stupid,” she said as sternly as she dared.  Her face and voice instantly turned to putty.  This wasn’t Ms. Grange, the taskmaster of Third Grade. This was Janet. “It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt worse than you were! Do you have any idea how worried everyone was for you?!”

I lowered my eyes to the tray. I gave a half-hearted, sheepish, “Sorry…”

I chewed on my tongue, hoping, daring her to demand that I repeat myself. Call her ‘Mommy’.  Come on Janet. I’ve taken one Amazon bitch today. Two if you count Brollish.  Let me go for the hat trick.

The dark haired woman let down her hair and shook it out, seeming more vulnerable, instead.  “And if things hadn’t gone in just the right way, who knows what would have happened?!  You could have been expelled.  Do you want to be expelled? Do you?”

Back down to the tray.  “No…”  I wanted to get the out of Oakshire Elementary. Just not like that.

“Do you want to get taken away from me because they think you’re dangerous or too hostile for me to take care of?”

I answered that one more readily. “No, ma’am.”

One giant hand draped itself gently over my contritely folded pair.  “Promise me you’ll never do something that stupid ever again.”

I’d already made that promise once today to Beouf.  I’d broken it just as quickly.  “I promise.” This time it felt weightier on my shoulders. Like I was saying more than just words to stop her from worrying.  I think…I think I really meant it this time.

Janet took my hands in both of hers and squeezed them gently, just enough pressure so I could feel it, taking special care not to injure the bandaged one. “Okay.  I believe you.”  She stood up to her full height so that she was once again above me, a judge ready to hand down her sentence.  “You’re grounded.”

I looked up at her, not breaking eye contact.  “Okay.”

“No T.V. until Friday.”
“I understand.”  

“Suspended from school means suspended from friends. No friend visits until Friday. That includes Little Voices”

I twitched. That one stung. “Yes ma’am.”

“No wandering around the house unattended. If you’re not in your crib, you’re with me. Clear?”

“Yeah,” I said glumly.

“Any questions?”

Time to fight.

“When did you switch out goat milk for breast milk in my bottle?”

Right then and there I would have liked for any number of things to happen:  I would have liked for Janet to have lied and told me that I was a silly Little boy with a big imagination. I would have loved for her to try and misdirect me; act confused or use word play. Technically all milk was breast milk. We just only called them breasts on people.  I wanted her to get defensive. I wanted to present my evidence and have it batted away time and time again with easily refutable counter arguments so that I could get mad and shout at the top of my lungs what a hypocritical bitch she’d been; pretending to care about me and listen to me while still withholding basic truths about what she was subjecting me to.   

I wanted her to lie to me; for her to do it poorly so I could catch her. Or maybe for her to lie so well that I might yet believe her and let her gaslight me. Or maybe I could get in on the lie, make it a shared lie.

But like so much in my life, things were not going according to my plan and what I wanted didn’t really factor in.

Shock blasted itself across Janet’s face. She slowly sat back down and took a deep breath.  “A while,” she admitted. “Pretty much as soon as the real goat milk ran out the first time.”  She avoided eye contact.  “How’d you figure it out?”

“I asked myself why you’d have a bottle of goat milk at school and no diaper bag to carry it in.”

“Damn,” Janet hissed under her breath. At a normal volume, she said, “My production has started increasing.  And you were liking it. Seemed a shame to keep expressing and pouring it down the drain.”

“Why’d Beouf mess up like that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Janet said, looking more and more like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. “I haven’t had the chance to ask. I think she thought I’d told you, and we were just using code words for your pride.”

In a way, that’s kind of what they were doing.  In a way, I kind of already knew. I just hadn’t wanted to know for sure.  “Yeah,” I nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Do you wanna know why?” Janet asked.

My shoulders slumped and I slowly shook my head.  “Not really. I think I figured it out.”

“Do you wanna tell me?” she offered.

I took a deep breath through my nose and puffed it out through my mouth.  Then again.  “Doctor gave you pills. You started lactating. You started slipping it in and replacing it until I couldn’t tell the difference.” I paused and shuddered again. “Probably didn’t even plan it like that. Just had the idea out of nowhere and tried it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, grateful for the benefit of the doubt.  “Clark I…”

I stopped her. “Don’t. I was making your life miserable. You were tired. You thought you were helping me. I get it.”

I would have been overjoyed if she had taken the opportunity to list the supposed benefits of Amazon breast milk.  I would have taken snippets about oxytocin, or digestive health, or bonding, or whatever and shoved them right up her nose. No such luck. I was swinging and she was taking every hit right on the chin.

“You’re right.”  Janet said. “I’m still sorry.”

“Sometimes saying you’re sorry isn’t enough.”  I threw back her words right in her face.

My Mommy nibbled on her bottom lip.  “What do you suggest?”

I looked her right in the eye and told her the truth. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not changing your punishment.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s fair. I screwed up.”

“I did too,” she undid the tray, and reached forward  “Hug?”

“No, thank you.”

She took her hands back.  “Sorry.”  She reached forward again. “I’m gonna put you down on the floor.”

“Okay.”

“It’s okay to be mad,” Janet said.

“I know.” I waited until she planted me back down on the kitchen floor.  “I’m just disappointed.”  It was true too.  Both of our faces fell. No tears though.  Just an awkward silence that built throughout the night no matter how much we talked and a growing cacophony in my brain every second we weren’t. I felt an ache inside me that had nothing to do with my guts.

************************************************************************************************************
I paced my crib, gritting my teeth and muttering to myself.  “You can do this,” I grunted and growled. “You can do this.”  

My eyes remained fixated on the baby monitor just out of reach.  “She hasn’t heard you. You’re not hypnotized. You’re not mindfucked. You’ve just been working harder, not smarter.”  The subtle squeaks of the mattress and the loud crinkling of my nighttime diaper filled my ears while my pulse quickened.

“She fucking drugged you!” I said. I gripped the rail with my fingers, and dug my toes into the mattress. Both were done through mittened gloves and feet. Not a punishment, supposedly. Just extra thick jammies for an incoming cold friend.  “Shoved her own bodily fluids into your mouth! That bitch!”

In the far corner, Lion sat passively, completely unimpressed with my theatrics.  She was just an Amazon. Baby crazy to the core with layers and layers of benevolent narcissism.  Should I really feel that surprised? That betrayed? This is exactly what Amazons did. This was just another check on the bingo card.  I was fortunate that she didn’t take me to the nearest public playground and pop her tit in my mouth for all to see and gawk at.

“It’s not like I’d confirmed it! It’s not like I knew knew!  It’s not like if she’d asked I would have said ‘yes’!”

It would have been nice to have been asked though.  Maybe even tempting.

Lion went sailing over the top rib.  “Fuck you…” I growled at the traitor. 

“And this fucking monitor!” I said. “Make me have to call her…call her that word to get her attention.  Even though we had a deal that I wouldn’t have to do that in private.  So much for that!  Typical!”  

To be fair, she had forgotten to tell me that part. An honest mistake.

 JUST LIKE SHE’D FORGOTTEN TO TELL ME ABOUT WHAT THE MILK REALLY WAS!

I planted my feet and leaned hard at the foot of the crib. She wanted me to use the monitor. She was going to get what she wanted.  I now had seventy two hours alone with her to sleep deprive her and break her will and make her existence as miserable as possible.

“Mommy,” I said.  Instantly the tiny light on the monitor blinked on, a beacon in the darkness of the room.  “Mommy, I hate you!.  I hate you, Mommy.  I hate you.  I hate you, Mommy.  I hate you, Mommy. I hate you Mommy..”  

I started building up steam inside myself, smiling wickedly.  “I hate you, Mommy!  Mommy I hate you! Mommy! I hate you! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I hate you, Mommy!”  

Oh it felt good to be saying it again! To be saying it and knowing that Janet was hearing it! Saying a stupid password so a machine would click on was worth it!  Especially because it meant Janet was hearing the word she most wanted to hear combined with the phrase she least wanted me to be able to say.

“I hate you Mommy!”  I wasn’t whispering anymore. Screw subtlety. Brash impulse had carried the day so far!  I started counting on my fingers and toes, wiggling them through the jammies, keeping track in sets of twenty. My left hand was just starting to hurt again, but that was a plus in my book.

Just like I’d intended, I’d drive that Amazon bitch to the brink of despair and hypocrisy. I’d either keep her up all night or force her to turn a blind ear to me.  She was no friend! She was an addict posing as a caregiver!  But I wasn’t going to give her her fix!

After a hundred rounds, I started marching around the crib. “I! HATE! MOMMY!...I! HATE! MOMMY!... I HATE! MOMMY!” 

I was on strike! I was picketing! Clapping my muffled hands and repeating those words until I didn’t know where the end of one phrase started and the other began.  “MOMMY! I! HATE! MOMMY! I HATE! I!” I was grinning like an idiot and feeling like a superhero. “HATE! MOMMY! I!...HATE! MOMMY! I!”

The nursery door winged open. A familiar outline entered the room and flicked on the light. “Mommy?!”

Standing in front of me was Janet in all of her non glory. Her wet hair from our shower was combed and down and everything about her body language reeked of quiet guilt. She wore loose fitting pink pajamas that almost complimented my fuzzy blue ones.  Her eyes were puffy and tired, her smile nervous and self-deprecating.

“Hey,” she said. “You called?”

I clenched my good fist. Now or never. “I hate you, Janet!” There! I said it! Ha! Take that mental block!  “I hate you so much!”

She stood up tall for a second and then slumped back down. “Yeah. That’s fair.”

“What?”

She walked over to my crib and lowered the rail.  “You sound like you need some company. Would you like some?”

“Janet,” I said, completely discombobulated. “Didn’t you hear me? I said ‘I hate you, Mommy’.”

She picked me up and cradled me so that I was still sitting up.  “I heard you, baby. I still love you, though. No matter what.”

“Nonononononononono!” I started to kick and struggle away from her rapidly approaching bosom. “Not again! Not again!”

The Amazon put me down on the floor, holding my arms immobile just so I wouldn’t hit her.  “I’m  not gonna do that!” she hushed. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m not gonna do that! I fucked up! Sorry!”

I regained control of myself.  “What?”  Had she just dropped an F-Bomb?

“You heard me.”

Back to the game, then. “I hate you.”

“I know,” she chirped. ”That doesn’t change how I feel. I still love you.”

“I hate you, Mommy!”

She picked me up again.  “Do you want to tell me you hate me here, or do you want to keep Mommy company in her bedroom?”

“Bedroom?” I parroted. Why was she taking me to her bedroom? “I…I…bedroom?”

Janet took that for consent. “Okay. I’d like that. Come on.”  She took three steps and stopped beside my stuffie.  “Oops! Almost forgot Lion.”  She balanced me on one hip so she could lean down and pick him up.  “Do we leave him here or bring him with?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s leave him here to guard the room.”

“NO!” I shouted.

“Okay. He can come with us.  We have room.”

“I hate you!” I repeated. “I hate you, Mommy!”

“Yup.”

Nursery gave way to hallway, hallway bled into living room. Living room passed by kitchen and entryway to the dark, peaceful bedroom.  “Mommy! Stop! I hate you!”  I tore Lion from her grasp and clung to him.  More like she handed him over to me, but still…

Janet let out a big yawn. A lioness in the heat of the savannah. “I’m tired,” she said.  “Keep me company in bed? Tell me you hate me while we fall asleep?”  Over by the gargantuan bed, so similar to what I’d slept in back in my old house was the detachable infant cot.  She’d finally put it together.

“I’m not sleeping in that!” I pointed as best I could to the baby bed attached to the real one. 

My Mommy considered it for a second and then responded with, “Okay. How about Lion sleep in it tonight?  You can cuddle with me.”

“This changes nothing!”

“Okay.”

“This doesn’t make up for the milk thing!”

“Agreed.”

“Then why…?  I hate you!”

My padded bum made contact with the massive mattress. So soft! Softer than I even remembered.  “Okay,” Janet said, plucking Lion from me and putting him in the bassinet.  Keep me company?”

“I…I…” I froze.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  Okay.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” she pulled me in close to her and worked her way to the head of her bed, gently tugging me along and tucking us both under the covers, burying us each under the massive duvet on her perfectly made bed.

 The covers!. Heavier than anything than had been put in my crib thus far, but the deep pressure provided a sense of regulation. I was practically swimming! Floating in a warm bathtub where I had no hope or fear of drowning.

“Okay,” she told me softly. “Tell me that you hate me.  I’m ready.”

The warmth from another person’s body!  Another sensation I did not expect to relive any time soon. I’d sat in Janet’s lap and been carried to the point where she was almost a living piece of furniture where my body was concerned, but this was different.

Damn did she smell good, too. Like so much more than lavender and piss. “I don’t want to,” I grumbled. “Not right now.”

“Okay,” Janet said.  “Can I give you one last kiss before I fall asleep?”

This was a trick. Or a trap. Something about her smell was conditioning me. Pheromones or something!  Or the blankets had something in them that was draining my energy away.  Or there was a subliminal message playing in the room that only affected me!  “Okay,” I whimpered. “Kiss me.”

She gave me one soft kiss right between the eyes.  “I love you,” she cooed and then nestled down, cradling me in the crook of her arm right beside her,

No escaping it. Not tonight.  I was hurt and exhausted; physically and emotionally drained. Confused beyond all reason and deep down I just wanted a tiny taste of peace that didn’t feel like burning oblivion or hurting someone who truly, madly, deeply, loved me.

So I closed my eyes.
*************************************************************************************************

Janet’s soft coos and probing fingers woke me.  “Morning, sleepy head.” 

“Hrn?” I groaned.  I turned my head to the side. We were back in the nursery. I was on the changing table.  Janet was still in her pajamas, and my snaps were undone all the way up to my waist.  

Morning birds were singing and the first shafts of sunlight were shining through the window, but it was still incredibly early.  Zoge and Ivy were meeting Beouf at the bus loop right about now.   “Mommy’s just gonna change you and take you back to bed.”

“Huh?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes. “Why?”

“We’ve got the day off. Remember?”

“But…”

Janet ripped the tapes off the landing zone and the cold chill of morning air on urine soaked privates and colder chill of a fresh baby wipe made their way over me, same as every morning. That’s not what surprised me, however. I’d woken up wet, messy, or on the verge of exploding every day since my life had been turned sideways. Yet this was the first time I didn’t remember waking up in the middle of the night to relieve myself. I had legitimately peed myself while unconscious.  I was a bedwetter!

“Go back to sleep, Clark.” Janet shushed me, taping up the fresh diaper so that it was nice and snug. So dry. So clean. So comfortable. “I just didn’t want you to leak. Go back to sleep.”

End Part 9

 

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

Chapter 111: The Trial of the Century

There I was, again: waiting in the school clinic, awaiting a rigged trial while Brollish worked sight unseen to ensure my doom and damnation. The key difference between this time and the last was that I definitely needed that fresh diaper that the nurse kept on the corner of her desk. That and I had actually done what I was being accused of.

I’d rushed up to another teacher and sucker punched her right in her schnoz. Then she’d smacked me so hard I saw stars and spanked me within an inch of my life.  In the chaos of it all, students and ex-coworkers had been drawn out of their classrooms and witnessed the thrashing of my lifetime.  

There was no getting around this.  There was no way out. I was done. The best case scenario was that I would get expelled and Janet would find me a full time private babysitter. No daycare would take a Little with a documented history of violence against Amazons. The only place that would is a place I’d never want to visit.   

Maybe Jessica would do it, I fantasized.  She wouldn’t be so bad. She was something of a trust fund baby anyways, so she could afford to hang out with me for free everyday; at least until the end of the school year.  She wanted to be a teacher, too, and talked to me more like I was an adult (or at least a very smart child) than most.  

It wouldn’t be spending my afternoons with Melony sipping on coffee, but it wouldn’t be so bad, would it?  Yeah. That could be nice.

I shuddered as the most intrusive thought burrowed into my brain:  What if Janet didn’t have a choice but to send me to New Beginnings?  Yes, she was my legal guardian, my Mommy, but wasn’t it possible to take that away from her?  All it had taken was some typing on a keyboard to get my adulthood revoked and have me shoved into her arms.  Would it really take much more to declare Janet an unfit parent and then rip me out of those arms so that I could be re-raised in a so-called proper setting?
“Shhhhhhh,” Janet hushed me, rubbing my back and stroking my hair.  “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe. Mommy’s here.  You’re safe.”  I wasn’t safe. I just wasn’t being beat anymore. She cradled me, and bobbed me like I was still screaming, but I had been almost completely silent from the moment I’d caught my breath.  Based on her heart rate, her behavior was more to hide her own shaking.

She was just as afraid as me. Angry too.  She was just doing her damndest to hide it from me.  She didn’t want her ‘baby’ to see her this upset.  It made sense that she was upset, though.  Everything was coming undone, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.  Nothing anyone could do.

After Tracy saved me, events sped up and proceeded in an almost maniacal clockwork fashion.  Brollish power walked out, flanked by Forrest and every spare hand in the front office and guidance.  They took Ambrose away to the teacher’s lounge in the cafeteria, still nursing the bloody nose I gave her. I hoped she was telling the truth.  

Janet blitzed out of her classroom the second her students could be shuttled off to other teachers in her building. Word spread that fast.  Or maybe she’d been in the crowd that saw the aftermath of my stunt. Things were still kind of fuzzy.

Tracy handed me off to Janet and took control of the preschool class, expertly diffusing outraged cries from Mrs. Dunwhich. Tracy’s man mountain of a husband stalked off to the front office, a man on a warpath, and Beouf gave Tracy the bare bones of what she’d seen while Zoge did her best to regain control and herd the other Littles away.

We were waiting in the clinic for about ten minutes for the school nurse to come back from the cafeteria.  My left hand was starting to swell, and bruising discoloration was popping up above and below my backside. Every part of my body that Ambrose had connected with was throbbing, the right side of my face included.

The real pain happened in between the throbs; in the seconds before the aching blunt sensations crescendoed to the point where it was hard to think. When it hurt so bad that I had to close my eyes and hold my breath, I had something to focus on; something to not think about.  It was on the back end, as waves of physical discomfort receded back down and I was able to think as myself that I felt despair.

We were fucked. We were fucked and I’d been the one to fuck it all up.  As recently as last week, I might have been proud of that.  I’d burned the world to the ground around me one last time, blaze of glory as the explosions consumed me.

Unfortunately, my friendships had started to grow back like weeds in the garden of my life; seemingly nourished by the manure that had been dumped all over it. And here I was about to lose them all over again.  Tracy; Beouf; my students; maybe even Janet.  I was going to lose Zoge and Ivy as well.  Billy, Chaz, and Annie were bastards but they were my bastards. Tommy too.  I’d miss the other kids in Beouf’s class.  If nothing else they were a good challenge to poke at and gauge how far I was pushing things.

Would I even get a chance to say goodbye?

What about Amy? What about Pink Hair or the Block Guys, or Wutzhisname? Would I still get to see her once a week or would Janet stop going to Little Voices meetings, too overwhelmed by everything?  Would I still have her after today? Fuck, what had happened in my life that I counted a bunch of baby crazy Amazons and Adopted Littles in various states of emotional and cognitive decay as friends?!

The nurse walked in and went straight to the sink.  “Good,” she said to Janet. “You’re already here.” She started washing her hands and putting on disposable gloves.  She motioned with her head over to a vinyl backed medical couch; normally just used for children to nap on while waiting for parents to pick them up if they had a fever or had puked.  “Lay him down there and get him undressed.”

Janet’s head turned to the still-open door.  “Can we get some privacy? Maybe do this in the bathroom?”

“I’m a nurse, Ms. Grange.  Clark doesn’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

“I meant from others,” Janet said. “I don’t want other children coming in.”  More to the point, the clinic was attached to the front office, and very close to the receptionist area by design.

The nurse sighed tiredly but put some artificial empathy into her tone. “Good point.  Wouldn’t want any of the other kids to worry too much.”  Translation: Wouldn’t want any extra sympathy to spread or parents to get involved in the wake of my upcoming expulsion.

Carrying me, Janet closed the door and locked it, then she laid me down on the soft medical mattress and began to undress me.  I shivered, as she popped open the romper button by button, peeling the green and blue striped garment off of me.  I’d broken out into just enough of a sweat to make myself uncomfortable and cold in the air conditioning.  

Even on the overly padded surface, a changing table pretending to be a mattress, I groaned and winced with my weight shifting and being moved around.

The nurse shuffled over and took a knee to examine me more closely.  “Mmm-mmm-mmm…” she said. “You really did quite a number on yourself.”  

“On himself?” Janet cocked an eyebrow.

“Just a turn of phrase, ma’am.”

I made eye contact with my caregiver. “Just a turn of phrase, Mommy,” I echoed a warning.  This lady spent all her time in close proximity to Brollish and Forrest. Pretty easy to guess where her sympathies lay.  Anything we said could and would be used in the kangaroo court of law.

“I’m going to look at his hand, alright?” the nurse said.  She inched her hand closer to mine, but waited for Janet to give permission.

“Ask him, too.” Janet told her.

The slightest sharpest inhale, and then. “Clark, honey? I’m going to take a look at your hurt hand, okay?”

I nodded.

I flinched as she gingerly poked and squeezed at my bruising left hand.  “Tell me if it hurts.”

“Ow,” I said.  “Ow. Ow. Ow.  Ow.”  

She worked her tongue in her mouth and wiggled her nose with every ‘ow’.  “Good news is I don’t think it’s broken, just really really bruised.  What did you hit, kiddo?”

“I don’t know,” I lied automatically.

“He might not have hit anything,” Janet said. “Ambrose might have hit him there or he might have hit it on the ground when she dropped him.”This was a bold face lie and Janet knew it! If half of my face hadn’t been on fire, my own surprise would have betrayed me.  

Luckily, the nurse wasn’t looking at my face, just then. She doubled back to the sink and opened a cabinet, returning with what looked something like a giant aqua-marine tape measure.  She flipped open the top like it a massive box of dental floss and pulled out a length of thick moist ribbon.

“This bandage is covered with some powerful numbing nanites,” she said. “This should also help bring down the swelling.’  She started wrapping my hand in the wet stuff, binding my entire left hand in a mummy’s mitten.  “Does that feel better, hon?”

I swallowed my pride and let out a pitiful, “Uh-huh.”  It really did too.  The cold wetness of the stuff seeped into my skin and numbed everything and the air dried the outside. Ten seconds after she cut the soggy tape off, the pain in my hand was gone.

The nurse tossed the first pair of gloves, washed her hands, and then pulled on a second pair.  “In a few hours that hand is gonna ache again,” she said. “Baby aspirin or some other children’s pain killer will help over the next day or two.  Just make sure he’s not crawling around on it or banging on it for fun. It’s like the dentist where he doesn’t feel it now, he will feel it later.”

“Got it,” Janet replied. Then, to me she asked, “Got it, Clark?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I got it.”  

“You may want to put on some gloves,” the nurse advised Janet. She put the bandages back and took out a tube of cream.  “Let’s take care of some of those other owies.”

I chomped down on my tongue. The last time I’d seen a tube like that was after I’d been zapped and ninety-nine percent of my body hair had been scorched off.  I was already breaking orders by unconsciously digging my hands into the couch, gripping it like it was an animal whose guts I could rip out.  

“You take care of the bottom, and I’ll take care of the top?” the nurse offered.

Janet sanitized her hands, but only put on one glove.  She grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket and held it very close to my face.  “Sure thing,” she said.  “Juuuuust a second.”  There was a clicking sound.  “Roll over on your belly for me, Clark.”

I did. Then another several clicks.  

“What are you doing?” the nurse asked.

“Documentation,” Janet said. “That cream helps repair the skin, doesn’t it? Gets rid of bruising and discoloration?”

The nurse only smiled and said “Ah.”

I rolled back over and stared at the ceiling while one giant dabbed numbing cream onto my face, while the other ripped open my diaper and wiped my backside.  “Hold still, bubba,” I heard, before my legs were lifted up and I heard a few more clicks from her camera.

“You must have fallen really hard on your face, Clark” the nurse pretended to muse. “Did you trip while you were running around?”

“He didn’t trip,” Janet’s voice had turned to ice.  She was still changing me, spreading that goop filled with pain numbing nanites in it and slipping the fresh Monkeez underneath me. But her voice was looking for a fight.  “That’s where Ambrose started beating him.”

The nurse was still playing defense for Administration. “How can you tell?  Kids trip and fall all the time. Accidents happen.”

Janet taped me back up and rolled me over. “Concrete doesn’t leave hand prints.”

“Ah.”

A tense two minutes later, I was sitting back up and having a hand mirror shoved in my face. There was some slight discoloration, a bit of red irritation on my face, but it didn’t look like a bear had tried to maul me. I’d fallen asleep on my side in the sun and barely avoided a proper sunburn.

My left hand was bandaged up in bright colors, but the right side of my face, back, thighs, and buttocks looked like I had the barest beginnings of diaper rash. Nothing a bit of makeup wouldn’t fix, or even just dimming the lights. My damage was highlighted. Ambrose’s was faded.

Typical.

“Thank you, Mommy,” I said, looking at the bulge in Janet’s pocket.

“You’re very welcome, sweetie.” Janet told me.  She started dressing me back up.

“You don’t have to do that,” the nurse said.

“I know,” Janet replied. “Just easier for the trip home.”

“Trip home?”  the nurse asked. “School’s not over yet.”

“I’m leaving early.”  Her eyes were focused on me, and buttoning up all of the snaps on the aired out romper, but her body was tense. Waiting for the challenge.

It came. “That might not be such a good idea,” the nurse said.  “I have a feeling Mrs. Brollish will need to talk to him.  She’s doing interviews right now to figure out what happened. Make sure she gets all sides of the story.”

“It’s okay, Mommy,” I said, playing the perfect Little angel that I most certainly wasn’t. Only the guilty run, and running wasn’t going to get me anywhere.  “I can stay.”

Janet gave my forehead another kiss, and picked me up. “Okay, baby. Let’s get you back to class.”

“Actually…” the nurse interjected, opening the clinic door again.  “He should probably stay here. Might not be safe to let him back in the classroom.”

“It’s his naptime. I’ve got a pack and play in my room, still,” Janet offered.

The nurse gave a pleasant, yet hollow smile. “That’s not a good idea, either. Let’s just keep him here.  He can sleep on my couch if he needs to.”

“I’m not sleepy,” I said.
The Amazons went forward in the conversation without me. “You’re free to go back to your room to teach, Ms. Grange. I don’t mind watching him.”  They didn’t want me and Janet alone.  Didn’t want either of us unsupervised or unaccounted for.

Janet sat down in one of the chairs and held me in her lap, wrapping her arms around me, afraid that I might float away from her.  “We’ll wait here, then.”  I felt another kiss on the top of my head. I really wanted Lion right then. I settled for reaching down and gripping the side of Janet’s lap with my good hand and sucking on my pacifier.

Our first few visitors were students. Nothing major. Just kids getting afternoon medication and the like. One kid stopped and interrogated Janet. “Is he sick?” that sort of thing. Nothing that couldn’t be shooed away, with the worst one being a fourth grader that couldn’t resist saying “feel better”.

But then a familiar tone in a language I still barely understood came swinging into the clinic. Ivy waddled hand in hand with her mother past the clinic, but her head turned to the side and peaked in.  We made eye contact.

“Clark!”

She slipped out of Zoge’s grasp, climbed up on top of a neighboring seat.

“Ivy!” Janet laughed. “What are you doing?”

As an answer, the Little Yamatoan gently leaned over and wrapped her arms around me. Light as a feather, she applied the barest bit of pressure so that I could sense the loving intent.

“Ivy,” Zoge said, her voice retaining its innate musicality. “Make good choices.”

Ivy stood back up and hopped back down. “Yes, Mommy.”

“Hana,” Janet giggled, forgetting the perilous position we were in.  “What’s going on?”

Zoge picked her daughter up, and positioned her on her hip.  “It seems our children are picking up bad habits from one another,” she said, cryptically.

“No, I mean, what are you doing here?”

“Ah,” Zoge nodded.  “Mrs. Brollish wishes to interview everyone she can that witnessed...” a beat of hesitation, a glance at the nurse, “the incident.  Ivy and I were reporting what we saw happen.  Mrs. Beouf and Miss Tracy are watching the children.  I am on my way to relieve them so that Mrs. Beouf can report. We’re already calling parents to inform them what happened and to have them come and pick up their children early.”

“Oh,” Janet said. “Alright.”  

“Good luck,” Zoge said. “And see you tomorrow, Clark.”  That earned her an upturned eyebrow from the nurse.

Speaking of the nurse, both Ivy and Zoge’s back was to the woman.  “I’m sorry, Clark. You taught me to never ask for a hug without permission.”  The way she said it sounded rehearsed and phony.  She did something with her eye, too.

Did…did Ivy just wink at me?!

“Ivy,” Zoge said, then she said something in Yamatoan.  Probably the word for ‘quiet’.

“Sorry, Mommy.”

“Good luck,” Zoge said, and then slipped with her daughter back out into the reception area and out the door.

Calling parents. Interviewing students and teachers. Sequestering witnesses. Interrupting afternoon classes. Brollish was in high gear; full damage control. She wanted this over now; after school just wouldn’t do.  I’d probably just ruined her day; so I at least had that going for me.

A brief knock on the side of the door, and Emiliano came striding in. The top of his head didn’t quite touch the massive frame, but he ducked out of habit.  “Hey, Jefe,” he said, his hoarse yet friendly growl just above a stage whisper.  “How you holdin’ up?”

“He’s fine,” Janet said. “He got hurt, but he’ll be okay.”

I’m not sure how it’s possible to give someone the side eye when they’re standing directly in front of them, but Tracy’s husband found a way.

“I’m shook,” I said. “But I’ll heal.”

Emiliano hunkered down on the balls of his feet. “Good. Good.  You took a heck of a whoopin’.”  A mischievous grin played at the corners of his mouth.  “It’s a good thing you’re not taller or I might be scared of you.”

I chuckled. The biggest man I’d ever met just told me that I took a beating like a champ.  How could I not?

“Sir,” the nurse tried to interrupt. unless you’re a parent or a teacher, you need to leave.”

He waved her off. “Mmmhmm. Sure. Uno momento.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He ran his hands through his thick black hair. “I was here to help Tracy quit,” he said. “Bring her in. Let her talk. Bring her out. No funny business. Comprende?”

A rock dropped in my stomach.  “Yeah,” I said.  “I understand.”

“Yeah,” the big man nodded sympathetically, “Good thing we saw you, first, eh?”
I jolted up in Janet’s lap.  “You mean…?” I dared to hope. “Tracy’s staying?”

“Sir…” the nurse tried to catch Emiliano’s attention.  She went ignored by all of us.

He shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?” Janet asked. She squeezed me a little tighter. I squeezed back.

“On how scary I was,” Emiliano flashed his teeth. “How smart Brollish is. If Tracy wants to keep coming here.”

“Sir. You need to-”

Emiliano stood back up to his full height and the nurse stopped talking.  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m going.”  A boulder sized fist floated down to me.  “You stay strong, eh, Jefe?”  I took my good hand and bumped it against his.  “Right on.  See you around, Boss. I’ll stop by your class and tell her you said ‘Hello’ before I go.”

The nurse was visibly relieved when she heard the exit door swing open.

Right on the man mountain’s heels, Beouf popped in, holding of all things, a baby bottle.  It wasn’t filled with milk, exactly; none of the overly processed cow stuff from the cafeteria. This stuff had more of a creamy tint to it.  More off-white than white.  Kind of like goat’s milk.

“Hey,” she said, quietly. “How you holding up?”

“We’re fine,” Janet said just as softly.  “Got some owies but they’re taken care of for now.”

My old mentor nodded.  “Good.”  Everyone was talking so low right now, afraid of saying something too loud or having something overheard.  All parties on both sides of this trial were in cloak and dagger mode.  Nobody wanted the other to hear something they shouldn’t, and both words and the volume that they were spoken at were being chosen very carefully.

She looked at me and shook the bottle. “Do you want a bottle, buddy?”

Janet reached for it instead.  I looked up at her and caught a mixture of concern and confusion.  “The bottle is yours,” Beouf said. “I popped by your room and grabbed it out of a mini fridge.”

“Oh,” was all Janet said. I felt her entire body heat up for some reason. “Goat’s milk.”

Some combination of looming existential dread and topically applied pain killers kept me from questioning why Janet would have goat’s milk at school. She couldn’t even remember to bring the diaper bag half the time.

In hindsight…
“If you want, we can start stocking it in my room,” Beouf plowed over the thoughts that wouldn’t quite come to me.  “Give it to him for snack time or something.  Take it with us to lunch.”

“Lunch?” I echoed.  Did Beouf really think that I’d be back for lunch this time tomorrow?

“We’ll still have to keep it in the classroom,” my oldest friend said. “You know how the cafeteria folks are. They don’t like holding onto anything that isn’t theirs. It’s already a stretch to get them to wash and dry the bibs everyday.”

There was a nervous frenetic energy underpinning Beouf’s speech. It had the cadence of someone on death row talking about what they were doing tomorrow.  We weren’t going to win this, but she was going to go down kicking and screaming with me anyways.

“Yeah,” Janet said. “I’d like that.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Beouf looked down and crossed her arms.  “What’s going on is that I’m kinda miffed at you, young man.” She switched instantly to her stern teacher tone.  It was the worst kind, too. Not mad…just disappointed.  “You made me a promise, and broke it.”

I was leaning back into Janet before I realized it, trying to bury the back of my head in her so that she would somehow magically envelop me.

“What promise?” Janet asked.

The volume of conversation had jumped up more than a notch.  Anyone listening in would barely need to strain to overhear.  The nurse looked up from her desk again, her fingers drifting over to the computer keyboard.  

“We had a talk this morning about following rules and procedures, didn’t we, Clark?”

My face burned hot and I stared down at my knees.  “Yes ma’am.”

“And who got out of line when they shouldn’t have?”

“I did.”

“And do we get out of line when we’re transitioning from the cafeteria to the classroom?”

“No ma’am…”

“And did you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Should you have?”

“No ma’am.”

“What do you say?”

I swallowed my pride.  It was the least I could do.  “Sorry, Mrs. B.  Sorry, Mommy.”  

I braced myself for the next question.  Something about controlling my temper or not letting bullies get the best of me.  No such line of questioning came.  All that happened was Melony ruffled my hair.  “Mrs. B. is still upset with your choices,” she said, “but she still loves you very much.”

I mumbled something.  It might have been “I love you, too”.

The bottle’s rubber nipple brushed against my cheek.  “Drink your bottle, hon.”

I accepted the bottle, and Janet jostled me around so that I was cradled again. Letting her hold it for me was easier with my injured hand.  Our breathing started to sync up while the cool creamy milk filled my mouth.  Waves of relaxation started to settle into me. My pulse dropped as my belly filled. I wasn’t even that thirsty, but the behavior mixed with the body heat and the familiar flavor mingled together to give me a sense of calm.

I wasn’t about to get expelled. I was just chugging my own version of a breakfast shake first thing in the morning.  Or having liquid desert right before a weekend nap.  Speaking of breakfast shake, something was off about the flavor of this batch.  It was actually a little too creamy; with something unnatural about it.  I pulled back and threw my head out so that I could get the nipple out of my mouth.  “Vanilla?”

Beouf blushed. “I hope you don’t mind.  I put some syrup in from the coffee mix.”  It was directed at Janet, not me.

“It’s fine,” Janet sighed. “I just want today to be over.”

“You and me, both,” Beouf agreed.  “You and me, both.”

In the far distance, past the reception area, the sound of a heavy door slamming closed and equally heavy footsteps registered.  Someone was making a very loud exit from Brollish’s office.  Probably not Brollish from the sound of it. That witch could glide across the floor.

“That’s my cue.” Beouf said. “Time to put out some more fires. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Janet said while I took the bottle back in my mouth.

Beouf brushed shoulders with the next visitor in my own private cell.  “I just got done talking to that principal of yours,” Martha Dunwhich said to the nurse.  Her hair was frizzier and her face was still red, but her eyes weren’t puffy and her makeup was intact. She’d been yelling and she wasn’t done.  She slammed her palms on the nurse’s desk and leaned over so she could shout directly into the other woman’s face.  “Are you also going with the story that a Little broke that awful woman’s nose?!”  

“I”m not allowed to divulge that information,” the nurse replied, coldly.

Dunwhich wasn’t having it. “You examined her. Is her nose even broken? Let me see her! I bet she just got kicked”

“I’m not allowed to divulge that information.”

“You expect me to believe that a grown woman was attacked?” Dunwhich shrieked. “Attacked by…by…a baby?!”

“Ahem…”  Janet cleared her throat.

The Amazon turned around with a sneer.  “Wh-?”  Then immediately melted when she saw me her shriek turned to a squeak. “Awwwww!”  

My entire body tensed.  Feeling it, Janet drew me in closer, cradling me so that half of my vision was obscured by her breasts.  It was a nicer view than I’d been previously treated to.

Dunwhich trotted over to Janet, her eyes white saucers. “You poor dear!” she gushed. “You’ve had quite a day haven’t you?”  Uninvited, she took the seat next to Janet.  “Does it hurt bad, baby boy?”

“Hello,” Janet said. “Do we know you?”

Dunwhich regained her composure. “No. Not at all. Martha Dunwhich, pleasure to meet you.”  She extended her arm out.

“My hands are full,” Janet said just warmly enough to not put the other woman off. I.E.P. meetings or not, teaching is too often a customer service industry as much as anything. Janet had that skill set on lock.  

The start of this nightmare took her hand back. “Of course,” she said. “Of course. I met your Little boy right as he had his first accident.”  Not this story again.  I kept my eyes straight up so I wouldn’t roll them.  “You’re his Mommy?”

“Thank goodness!” Martha Dunwhich said. “For a second I was worried that…that…that bully had Adopted him and that’s why she was spanking him.”  Janet shifted in her seat subtly, so that her knees were starting to face away from the other woman.

“So do you know Clark besides that?”

“Oh no, no, no,” Dunwhich corrected herself.  “I haven’t seen him since.  That and today.  I gave his class some extra cupcakes!  He was so cute!”  Her hands fidgeted her lap, like she was just envisioning reaching out and pinching me on the cheek again.  “So well behaved too!  A bit rambunctious and silly, but that’s natural for them.”

I sucked on the milk harder, almost wanting to gag myself.  Janet’s face was a placid lake, but based on the subtle shifting in her lap, I had a feeling we were in this boat together. For once, the whole ‘seen and not heard’ thing was playing to my advantage.  I didn’t want to talk to this woman.

Oblivious to our own discomfort, Dunwhich continued to yammer. “I’m going to have to go home, and explain to Emily why hitting Littles is wrong, now.  She’s probably traumatized, watching your poor sweet boy get…”  She topped. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Janet said evenly.

“And that principal is making up some story like he hit her!”

I stopped the flow of milk with my tongue.  What was she talking about? She was there when I marched right up to Ambrose and threw my whole weight into that punch.

“As if such a sweet Little boy would purposefully attack an adult!”

Except she wasn’t!  She’d been handing out those cupcakes on the side of the cafeteria, while Ambrose had been dressing Elmer down- literally- around the corner closer to the front entrance!  Could it be?  Had the angles accidentally worked in my favor?!

“Hmmm…” was all that Janet said.

“He might have been a tad naughty and excited! But he didn’t deserve that!”

“Ma’am,” the nurse said. “You really shouldn’t be-”

“I shouldn’t what?” Dunwhich turned on Brollish’s eyes and ears here.  “Tell the truth?”  She took out her phone.  “I saw the whole thing and filmed it!  Right in front of the kids, this abusive monster just picks up a baby and STARTS…!” She looked at me again and lowered her voice. “I’ve already told her.  If that brute is in Emily’s classroom tomorrow morning, I’m pulling my daughter out and taking this to the School Board.”

I let the milk flow again. Administrators feared two things: Angry Parents and School Board members.  If I was going down, I was happy to know I was taking Ambrose down with me.  But maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t going down, either.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Dunwhich said. “I’ve got to get my daughter out of here.  I hope things turn out okay for you and your Little.”

One of the pushiest Amazons I’d ever encountered (and that was saying a lot) showed herself out, and left me to finish the bottle and be burped in relative privacy with only the nurse for silent company.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Janet whispered over and over again, patting and rubbing at my back.  “You’re gonna be fine.”  She didn’t fully believe it either.  Some unexpected blessings were blowing our way but we were far from out of the woods.  I belched without complaint, doing everything I could not to make things more difficult than they were.

Beouf came back in, only poking her head through the open door.  “Come on,” she whispered.  “It’s almost time.”  Janet carried me past reception on her hip. Beouf lead the way, despite us all knowing where we were headed. “Won’t be long. We’ve only got one person ahead of us.”

Like a shadow, the nurse followed us, keeping her distance but still doing her level best to mind anyone’s business but her own.  We still couldn’t speak freely.

We were waiting in the hallway just outside of Brollish’s office, when a mighty need came over me; one that had nothing to do with bodily functions or autonomy.  “Can you please put me down?” I asked Janet, tapping her on her shoulder.  “I need to walk into the office.”

“Why?”

“I just…I just do, okay?”

That was good enough for Janet.  She set me down softly on the carpet, leaning over so she could still hold my good hand.  I gave hers a squeeze. She squeezed back.

The door opened slowly and quietly. Out of the office came two relatively tiny figures.  They were a mother and son; Tweeners. The Mom was about the same height as Tracy, but skinnier, practically stick like, her face wrinkled prematurely with the constant worry lines of someone walking life’s tightrope. There were a handful of fifth-graders taller than her. By graduation, that number would shoot up with growth-spurts and early onset puberty.  The boy, a four year old, and because of his heritage, he was one of the few students that I was still slightly taller than.

“Mr. Gibson?”  Elmer asked.

“Hey, buddy.” I waved meekly, trying not look as ridiculous as I felt right then.

Elmer’s face scrunched up and his mouth opened, but no sound came out.  His face turned pinker and pinker and tears started dripping down his cheeks before finally a tea kettle of a wail issued forth from his throat.

Oh no! Not again!  I stared at the floor, ashamed at the monster I’d become to my own student. He couldn’t even look at me without breaking down into a panic attack.  I gripped the pacifier dangling from my collar and considered shoving it into my mouth.  Or would that make things worse?  

Two arms, slightly pudgy with baby fat wrapped around my torso and a not-quite kindergartener’s head buried itself in my shoulder. “THANKYOOOOOOOOU!” Elmer bawled into me.  “TH-TH-TH-TH-THANKYOOOOOOOOOOOU!”

“Thank you?” my voice started to crack.  “Elmer? B-b-buddy. What are you-? Why are you-? Why?”

“I’M SORRRRRRRRRRRY! I’M SORRY! I’M S-S-S-SORRRRRRY! I’M SO S-S-SORRY!”

I dislodged my arms from the tiny Tweener’s grip, just so that I could hug him back with all the strength I had left in my body.  “It’s okay, buddy,” I whispered. “It’s okay.  You don’t have anything to be sorry for.  Nothing.”

“Awwwwww,” Beouf loudly cooed over me. “Looks like you finally got that hug you were both looking for. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Yeah,” Janet’s voice cracked. “It really is.”

Their comments went completely over my head.  My entire focus on the child who needed me right then and there.  “I LOVE YOU, MR. GIBSON!” Elmer blubbered. “I LOVE YOU! I’M SORRY! I LOVE YOU! I! LOVE! YOOOOU! THANK YOOOOOOU!”

I’d done a lot of crying since my Adoption. A lot. A lot, a lot.  I’d shed more tears in the last several weeks than I had in the several decades prior. The freedom to scream and shout and cry at every thing that vexed me was one of the few freedoms I was still permitted.  One type of crying that I hadn’t done a whole lot of, however, was happy crying.

My face broke out into the biggest, mushiest, dopiest grin, and as my eyes scrunched together, the drops of water came out as if squeezed from a nearly wrung out sponge. For a moment, just for a moment, I was my old self.  I was a teacher, an adult giving comfort to a poor child who was overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the past few hours.

For just a second, I was Clark Gibson, preschool teacher, and it was the greatest goddamn feeling in the world.  “It’s okay, buddy,” I said as calmly as I could, my voice fluctuating with the tightness of my throat.  I just kept rubbing his back in the same way that Janet had taken to rubbing mine.  “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”  For just a bit, I believed my own lie.  

His mother’s hand landed softly on his shoulder.  “Okay, Elmer. It’s time to go home.”

Elmer stepped back from me and wiped his nose on his shirt.  “But-!”

“You were a good boy and told Mrs. Brollish what you know,” his mother said. “Now it’s time to go.”

Always more mature for his age than people gave him credit for, Elmer sniffled, wiped his nose on his own shirt, and took his mother’s hand.  “Bye.”

I wiped my own nose on my bicep. “Bye, bud.”  The pair walked out into the empty reception area and off into the front parking lot just by the bus loop.

Janet knelt down and brushed away my own tears. “You okay?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. Not really. But I don’t have a choice right now, do I?”

My Mommy’s lip quivered like she was about to start. “No. I don’t think we do. Come on.”

Flanked by Beouf, Janet and I walked into Brollish’s office hand in hand. Brollish didn’t get up from her desk. Scooted off to the side, was another older woman staring dutifully down at her county issued laptop and typing up a storm.

“Ms. Grange. Clark. Please, have a seat.”  She gestured to the familiar face.  “Miss Bankhead, our Resource Compliance Specialist, is here simply to record.”

Bankhead acknowledged our presence with the briefest glimpse.  “Hello.” Then she went back to typing as if she were a court stenographer.

The flaps in Brollish’s throat went taut as she craned her neck over us. “Mrs. Beouf, would you please shut the door on your way out?”

Beouf shut the door, but joined  us by the seat next to where Janet and I were standing.  “I’m here as a representative and advocate.”

“Of?”

“I’m Clark’s teacher, and Ms. Grange’s union representative. I have every right to be here if Janet as either the child’s legal guardian or faculty member allows me to be.”

Janet sat down and pulled me into her lap.  “Yes, please. Thank you,” she said immediately.

Beouf did not take the seat beside us, yet.  She was staring at Brollish, the old crone busy making calculations.

“You weren’t here for Ivy,” Brollish said.

“Mrs. Zoge is both her mother and a school employee,” Beouf said matter of factly. “You needed at least one adult minding my class.” There was a moment of clacking on Bankhead’s laptop.  “Correct? We have that in writing? We still have that in the email you sent to me immediately after and the notes from when we talked?”

Brollish didn’t respond, but Bankhead gave a subtle head bob in the affirmative.

“You weren’t here for the last student I interviewed,” Brollish tried.

Beouf pushed her glasses up my nose.  “Elmer is not my student. He had his mother with him. Beyond basic supervisory duties to ensure his safety that all faculty and staff have, I have no connection with him or his mother.”

Brollish tried a verbal parry. “So are you saying I should have let Miss Ambrose be present when I spoke privately to Elmer and his mother?” I winced at the idea.

“I am saying that I have the right to be here if my student’s parent or guardian requests it.”

Janet spoke up. “I request it.”

“Will you be doing this for all of your students if their parents request it?” Brollish asked, her face a grim mask.  Now that we were in there, the entire office was smelling strongly of potpourri; dead flowers meant to cover up the smell of rotting flesh held together by a wicked soul. Maybe that was just my imagination.  

Like the last time, I decided to sit back and trust my mentor.  “If they ask me, yes,” Beouf said. “Assuming you feel the need to interview eight other Littles about what a member of staff did.”

A lump moved from one cheek to another with Brollish sliding her tongue all around her teeth behind closed lips.  “Are you sure you’re allowed to be here, Mrs. Beouf?  I’m not sure this is necessary.”

Janet adjusted me on her lap. “I would like to also officially request union representation,” Janet said.  “And for Mrs. Beouf to remain as a witness to go over the notes with Miss Bankhead and ensure that digital and hard copies are sent out to the necessary parties.”

Brollish’s face had barely shifted. Through half closed eyes she said, “Do you really think union representation is necessary for this, Mrs. Grange? This is a conference and investigation concerning Clark’s behavior this afternoon. You’re not here as a teacher.”
“Can you guarantee in writing that nothing said here will directly affect evaluations as a teacher?” Beouf butted in. “If he’s suspended or expelled, are you going to hold it against her taking time off to see to his needs?  Or can you assure us that such penalties are off the table?”

I focused on the little hairs of Brollish’s upper lips, checking across the room to see if they were still moving; hoping that maybe the old bat had died sitting down with her eyes open. “You’re very welcome to join us, Mrs. Beouf.”

Beouf sat down next to us. Too bad the additional context as to why she was allowed to sit was the exact opposite of comforting.  “Much appreciated,” my old friend said. “Thank you.”

A thin smile that came nowhere close to her eyes creaked up Brollish’s skull.  “You’re very welcome.”  Her eyes moved over to Janet’s lap.  “Clark?”

I waited for her to say something.  Several seconds ticked by.  She didn’t.  “Yes, ma’am?”

“Why did you punch Mrs. Ambrose in the nose?”

“We don’t know that he did,” Beouf interrupted before I could react.

The slightest eyebrow raise from across the table.  “Don’t we?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” Beouf fired back with equal calmness. “Are you accusing him of something?”

“Mrs. Ambrose is on record saying Clark ran at her screaming, and punched her right in the face as she was bending over to get at eye level with another student,” Brollish explained. Funny thing is that it was true. “Her nose is broken. That’s good enough for me.”

“How do we know that he did it on purpose?” Beouf asked. “He could have accidentally hit her when she started spanking him.”

“Why would she spank him then?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Beouf said. “That’s not something that is allowed, not without written parental permission.”

“I did not and do not give permission.” Janet added.

Like a chess player viewing the board, Brollish put her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers in concentration.  “It’s true,” the crone admitted, “that corporal punishment is frowned upon.  Certain bits of wiggle room are permissible in the name of self-defense.”

“Self-defense?!” Janet sneered. “You’re kidding. Self? Defense?  From a Little? A Maturosis Little? A baby?”

“Maturosis or not,” Brollish replied, “I can’t allow a student on this campus who is a danger to others. An unprovoked attack on a faculty member is by definition dangerous.  An entire afternoon of instruction has been lost because my preschool teacher has a broken nose.”

“If you take her word for it,” Janet snipped, barely keeping her cool.

“Why would I take the word of a child over an adult?” Brollish came back icily.  “Not only a child, but someone I had to fire due to breach of contract?”

My everything was getting ready to burst with how angry I was.  I must have passed that energy into Janet because she said, “You haven’t even heard his word, yet!”

“Janet…!” Beouf warned too late.

“Yes,” Brollish pretended to agree. “Let’s hear what Clark has to say for himself.  Clark? Please. Tell us in your own words. What happened?”

I so wanted to shout every obscenity over at Brollish.  She had me over a barrel and she knew it.  Elmer had said what happened.  So had Ivy. Both had the mindsets of literal children. Brollish just wanted to catch me in a lie or get me to confess.

I needed to scream. I needed to thrash. I needed to think. I needed time.  A fullness in my gut, newly irritated by the addition of heavy cream and vanilla, no doubt, made me need to do something else.  

I inhaled. Fuck it. Might as well.

I leaned forward, stared off into the middle distance directly in front of Brollish, pretended I was giving her the middle finger, and filled my pants up sitting in Janet’s lap.  It was easy since I’d had so much practice. After the initial three second push, my body sped right past the point of no return and a veritable mudslide gushed out of me and into the seat of my Monkeez.  

“Is he…?” Brollish looked genuinely disturbed.

“Pooping?” Beouf said, casually. “Probably. That’s what the diaper’s there for, right?”

Janet scooped me up by the armpits, taking more pressure off my rear. That made things go along even faster, the front of my diaper swelled and sagged beneath me with added pee as my bowels finished clearing themselves. The snaps between my legs were doing more than their fair share to hold the increasing mass up.

Was it my diet? Fiber? Fruits and veggies?  Was I slightly lactose intolerant?  Had I just done it so much by this point that I’d become good at it?  Hard to tell.  But there was a certain happiness that came over me, watching Brollish’s nose wrinkle and her being forced to sit there awkwardly, trapped in her own office, looking at me taking a dump right in front of her.  If it had been a potted plant, it would have been better, but this would have to do.

Janet lowered me back down to her lap, and I felt the warm muck and mess spread around beneath my redistributed weight. I allowed a goofy, happy smile,and gave out an audible sigh of relief.  Watching Brollish’s lip curl ever so slightly, witnessing that breach of composure made the lack of dignity gratifying.

Comparing their faces a new realization occurred to me:  Beouf seemed relaxed, oddly amused. Not only was she used to seeing Littles poop their pants on a daily basis as to be immune to disgust; but she very likely knew me well enough to sense the joy I was taking at Brollish’s discomfort.  Janet was already settling me back into her lap and cuddling me in her grip, but she was being much more still and steady with her legs. Me pooping myself was gross, but I was her Little, her baby, so that made it more than bearable. Bankhead’s eyebrows twitched slightly, but she went right back to typing as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.  She’d been in so many I.E.P. meetings over the years, that the idea of a Little having an accident right there at the meeting was only foreign in that most Littles didn’t get to attend their I.E.P. meetings.

Brollish was quietly repulsed. Children, which I was supposed to be, were dirty things that were tolerated and humored in small doses.  Moreover, the gears were turning in her brain, looking for the next angle of attack.  In short, three of the Amazons strongly believed that I was actually a baby for all intents and purposes.  Brollish? She either didn’t believe it or it just didn’t factor into her calculations.

Interesting.

Bonus points, my spite shit had bought me some time.  Just not enough.

“If you’re finished,” Brollish said. “Why don’t you tell me why you hit the teacher.”

“Can I change him, first?” Janet asked. “I don’t want him getting a rash.”

She moved to get up but Brollish motioned her back down. “No no.  That can wait.  That’s what the diaper’s for, right?” She burrowed her gaze down into me “Talk to us Clark. Please.”

“He was…”

“No thank you Mrs. Beouf,” she cut Melony off. “Your testimony has already been taken. No need to coach.”  Melony gripped the arms of her chair and stared at me with as much fervor, her jaw working and grinding like she was trying to send me a message via telepathy.
I blinked

“No need to coach.”  She was coaching me, wasn’t she?

Two blinks.

“You’re free to go back to your room to teach, Ms. Grange. I don’t mind watching him.”   And they were keeping me away from the others, and under watch so that they couldn’t tell me something.

Three.

“You needed at least one adult minding my class.”  That would mean Ambrose’s class too, wouldn’t it?

“See you around, Boss. I’ll stop by your class and tell her you said ‘Hello’ before I go.”  So it stood to reason that Tracy was watching our kids alone, too.  School had to keep functioning as a school before the buses pulled out.

Four blinks.

“It seems our children are picking up bad habits from one another.”

 “I’m sorry, Clark. You taught me to never ask for a hug without permission.”

“Looks like you finally got that hug you were both looking for.”

It was a good thing I’d just shit my pants because then someone could shout ‘You-Reek-Uh!’

“I saw my friend Elmer,” I said. “And I really really missed him because when I was a big boy I used to be his teacher.”  I tug my bandaged left hand up over my bottom lip and started playing with.  With my right hand I started fiddling with the pacifier.

“And?”

“I got Ivy to get me out of the harness so I could run over to Elmer and give him a hug.”  The first few syllables were garbled until Janet gently pulled my fingers out of my own mouth.

“And?”

I looked out of the corner of my eye. Beouf was leaning further back in the chair with each passing second. Tension and nervousness was exiting her body, practically evaporating.

“I tried to give him a hug,” I continued, “but then somebody grabbed me and I got scared and I turned around  and my hand hurt and then,” I started to sniffle.  I made my throat close up and crushed my face into itself so I could let out one pathetic falsetto, “owie!”  

“Shhhhh,” Janet said, rubbing my back again. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Then with more volume, Janet said. “So my Little boy went to give a friend a hug, hopped out of line, ran away, and interrupted Ambrose giving some kind of instruction to a child. Does that sound correct?”

Brollish removed her glasses and exhaled through her nose.  “According to the majority of reports I have received? Yes. It seems that way.”

I’d done it! We’d done it! Brollish didn’t want to give us time to coordinate and create a cover story, but she still needed to keep the school running!  Beouf, Zoge, and Tracy all had time to talk with each other and communicate, get their story straight and pass along hints to me!  Tracy must have even gotten Elmer and his mother in on the act when parents were called.

That doesn’t seem like self-defense to me,” Mrs. Beouf said. “Even if it was, it has no merit regarding expulsion.”

Defeated, Brollish asked. “Why do you say that?”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that everything Ambrose said is true.” Beouf said. “A student of mine slipped his harness, ran up, and attacked an adult unprovoked.  Clark has a Developmental Plateau somewhere between eighteen and thirty months. Higher in some areas, lower in others. One and a half to two and a half years old, tops.  Functionally a toddler in almost everything but raw intellect; fairly common in Maturosis when diagnosed and treated correctly.” She chuckled under her breath. “I’ve got a model I can show you using blocks if you’d like.”

Brollish replaced her glasses. “Get on with it,” she sighed.

“If a not even three year old sucker punched an adult and then was publicly beaten, do you think it would be a good idea to expel a student for that?”

“I do not.”

“Expulsion should only be considered in extreme circumstances,” Beouf quoted as if from a written document (which she very likely was). “Such as when a student is a danger to other students.”

“Yes,” Brollish agreed, a bit too readily.  “You’ve got a point.” She leaned over in her desk, opened up a cabinet, and from her witch’s cauldron, she took out a manilla folder. “Which is why I’d like to discuss this.”

She opened it up. Stapled to the inside was a clear plastic sandwich bag containing an absolutely vile looking bottle of what used to hold cinnamon. Worse than the bag, in the folders were pictures of a Little boy in a sailor suit coughing up clouds of brown dust, a single one showing the first round of vomit coming out of his mouth.

“The photographer saved a few of these for me,” Brollish said.  “Care to explain, Clark?”

The feeling of victory I’d experienced planted itself right between my shoulder blades; a nagging itch that I just couldn’t reach.  I’d been so close, too.  “No…” I said. “I don’t.”

“He probably doesn’t even remember that,” Beouf tried.

“It doesn’t matter if he remembers it or not,” Brollish answered. Her tone a quiet mockery of Beouf’s early confidence. “I have evidence to suggest that he poisoned himself and several other students.  That’s dangerous. Very dangerous.  He even hid the evidence in the diaper pail somehow. That signifies intent, don’t you think.”

She’d held onto this as a back up plan in case her original gambit failed.

“I thought it’d be funny,” I said.  Honestly? In hindsight? It kind of was.  Playing the idiot had gotten me this far.

Beouf scowled, “Clark…”  I wasn’t helping myself.

“Speaking as his parent and a teacher,” Janet said, “I think you’re reaching, ma’am.”

As if all that she needed were the pictures, she slid them across the desk so that Janet could get an even better look.  “Oh?”

“If Clark were a thirty two year old adult,” Janet stated, “I would agree with you.  That’s a fireable offense, for sure.”  

Behind her glasses Brollish was grimacing. She suddenly saw where this was going.

“Clark is legally a baby, now,” my Mommy continued. “He doesn’t even have the identification number he was born with.  He’s legally a different person. Fresh start.  It’s not fair to hold him to one set of standards and then another when as it suits us.”

“He nearly killed himself choking and several others could have been hurt too.  They also vomited everywhere.”

“He’s a baby,” Beouf jumped in. “All of my students are. That’s why they’re my students. Babies stick things in their mouths all the time. High sensory seeking behaviors. They talk other babies into doing silly things, too. Low impulse control and a desire for recognition.”

The clacking of Bankhead’s computer, then, “Does that mean,” Brollish asked, “that you failed in your duties to prevent that behavior?  You allowed the contraband to be snuck in?”

“Yes ma’am,” Beouf nodded. “And if you would like to put that in my yearly evaluation or have that otherwise affect my performance review this year, you have every right to do so and I accept it.”

The Principal seemed so shocked that Beouf would accept a penalty of some sort so quickly that Janet was able to get in, “If it’s about vomiting on purpose, ma’am, then you need to have words with some fourth and fifth graders who chugged pop rocks, pixie sticks, and soda at the Fall Festival.”

A low grunt rumbled out of Brollish as the dusty old processor that was her brain ran the numbers.  “You make a very good point, ladies,” she said. “That is why, effective tomorrow through the end of Thursday, Clark Grange will be suspended.”

No one said a thing.  It could have been so much worse. Still… “Suspended?” I asked. “Why?”

“I am a firm believer in restorative justice,” Brollish said. “You did a very bad thing, and need to face consequences for that action. Because of your status, I can’t have you mopping floors, so I’m giving you time out to reflect on what you’ve done by giving you the maximum amount of suspension for that type of infraction.”

“Vomiting?” Beouf asked, incredulous.

“Vandalism,” Brollish said simply. Okay. Yeah. That was admittedly fair.  “Ms. Grange, I trust you have either enough emergency sub plans and time off to watch him or the means to ensure for his care?”

Janet stood up with me. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good. Mrs. Beouf, you may take your student back to the classroom for the remainder of the day.”

I was quickly passed over to Beouf. I’d already forgotten what was going on beneath my waist because of all the adrenaline pumping in me.  “Yes, ma’am.’

“Thank you for your time, ladies.”

We walked stiffly and silently out of the office, out into the reception area, and then circling around into the courtyard.  Janet gave me a final kiss on the cheek.  “We’ll talk more at home,” she promised.

Beouf didn’t say anything till we were almost in the classroom. “Big boy?” she said. “Really?”

“What?” I blushed. “I was trying to sell it.”

“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, bud? Anybody who knows you knows that you don’t talk like that!”  She tweaked my nose and winked. “Good thing Brollish doesn’t really know you, huh?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“I’m Cwawk,” Melony lisped all the way into an obnoxious falsetto. “An’ I’m justa widdle baby. Notta big boy! Ooowooo!”

I gasped in half-mocking exasperation.  “Are you making fun of me for actually talking like my Developmental Plateau Melony Beouf?”

“No, Clark Gibson Grange,” Melony smirked. “I’m making fun of you for doing a bad impression of what you think I want your Developmental Plateau to sound like. You taught preschool for how long and that’s the best you can do?”

“Shut up,” I laughed, and stuck out my tongue at her.  She stopped at the door and stuck hers out right back at me.  “Gibson Grange?” I said.  “What’s up with that?”

“Slip of the tongue,” Beouf shrugged, bobbing me in my messy Monkeez with it. “I don’t normally know people’s pre-Adopted names.  I messed up and self-corrected in the same thought and hoped you wouldn’t notice.” She grabbed the door handle. “Come on, stinker, let’s get you changed.”

“Deal.”

It had been a day of terrible and wonderful miracles.  As it turned out there was still one left.
“Hey, Boss!”

Beouf’s room was in total chaos. The normally well organized classroom was littered with stuffies and toys from every activity center and bit of closet space.  Rather than attempt any form of discipline or instruction, Zoge had just given up pretense and initiated a kind of indoor recess.

Zoge hadn’t been the only certified adult in the room, however.  Standing amidst the chaos, my favorite Tweener surveyed the real life three and four year olds playing amongst the eighteen to thirty five year olds forced to act younger.  What’s more, they were playing with each other.  No shouts of ‘baby’ or shoves or pushes from the bigger children.  No fear or manipulation from the smaller adults.

“Okay kid,”  Chaz said. “Put that block there.”

“But that’ll make it all fall.”

“Exactly!” Chaz snapped his finger. “It’s not good fun until something is falling down!”

“Hold still,” Annie said to a former student of mine. “I haven’t done this in a while.”

“Are these gonna make me look pretty?” the massive three year old asked, while Annie fiddled with hair clips.  

“You’re gonna be the prettiest dolly in all the land. Promise!”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the Littles were kind of…babysitting?  Not with any kind of actual authority, but the children were following their lead.  Lots of questions of “what next?” and declarations of “follow me!”  Over in the reading nook, Mandy and Shauna were giving an impromptu phonics lesson.  Jessie and Sandra Lynn were working with finger paints and giving an art seminar.

“Tracy?” I gawked. “What in the world is happening?”

“Mrs. Zoge and I decided to combine classes for the afternoon. This place has better toys.”

“But…but…but…” I spread my arms over the entire scene.  If I hadn’t known any better I’d say Ambrose had never indoctrinated them.  “We had a talk after lunch.”

“About what?”

“Treating people the way you want to be treated,” Tracy said. “Gold Rule.  Oh, and about how Littles with Maturosis were very experienced babies, and you could still learn a lot.from experience. That and I promised them extra cupcakes if they were nice.”  Her nose started to wrinkle at my smell.  

“Come on,” Beouf said. She started high stepping over blocks and playsets.. “Let’s get you cleaned up, oh experienced one.”

Peering over Beouf’s shoulder, I saw Tracy bend over and whisper something into Tommy’s ear.  Whatever she was telling my least favorite asshole, he was digging it.

I stared at my reflection in the ceiling mirror, smiling up at myself. As far as Little victories went, this was easily the Littlest.  I’d won with the help of my friends because I’d done something so incredibly stupid as to be nearly suicidal and they all covered for me.  My only punishment was three days off.

“Just like old times,” I whispered.  I was so tired and over the moon with relief that it didn’t even bother me seeing Beouf’s hands unbutton my romper again and expose my ruined diaper.

Beouf grabbed a fresh diaper and started unfolding it.  “What was that?” she asked, her hands already going for the tapes.

From the classroom, shouting so loud that it could be heard over everything else came Tommy’s thundering voice. “ALL HAIL CLARK GIBSON! THE GIANT KILLAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

My change was delayed by a good two minutes with both of us cackling and gasping for breath in the bathroom, Beouf becoming so weak that she fell to her knees and had to steady herself and climb back up to her feet using the changing table’s shelves.

[How man words is too many for one update?]

5k is fine.  Length determines length; not quality.  

[Conspiracy - a vignette based on Unfair.]

3 hours ago, Operational Systems said:

Thank you both for the strong words of encouragement.  Especially Personalias who finally got around to reading it.  I'm glad everyone liked it.

I'm literally encouraging everybody on my twitter to read it.  This is amazing.  Sorry I didn't see it sooner.  You have permission to poke me and go "Pers! Focus! Focus!" whenever you want.

[Conspiracy - a vignette based on Unfair.]

Reading this just took me back from Clark in Chapter 141 all the way back to Clark in Chapter 1. 


This is Fan Fiction.  

BUT

If it WERE canon and a certain Mr. Gibson had gotten the chance to read those essays, he would have been crying tears of pride at his first batch of children and how they'd grown up.  And if he'd heard of what had happened to them over the summer, Unfair would have been VERY DIFFERENT.

[Alby & Max (Part 4 Now Posted)]

(Part 4)

Max looked down at the drunken twenty-something idiot there in the snow.  “Goddamn it, Alby…” he’d already said it two or three times in the last ten seconds, but apparently he needed to say it a couple more times.

This dumb fucking kid. 

“Heeeeeeeeey, Max…”  Alby wheezed with the stupidest panting grin on his smug face.

Max made no effort to help the dog up to his feet.  He was too baffled to be angry, and the adrenaline surge from the sudden turn of events was having an oddly calming effect.  Not so much serenity as it was tunnel vision. “What the hell are you doing here, dude?”  The way Max said ‘dude’, wasn’t with the casual familiarity of two friends greeting one another, but with the derogatory and pitying contempt that a rancher might call a stupid city slicker in a ten gallon hat and a Roy Rogers costume. 

Alby took a few moments to pant, catch his breath and let out a groan.  “Uuuugh.  Wanted…to get…into…that secret room… that you didn’t…want me to see”

Max’s mouth lowered like a drawbridge in surprise. “Why the hell would you want to do that?”  He sniffed.  It didn’t take a wolf’s keen senses to smell the booze on Alby’s breath. “Are you drunk?”

“Yeah…” Alby’s eyes clouded over for a moment. Max leaned over and snapped his fingers right in front of Alby’s face.  “Hm? Oh yeah. Yeah.  I was drunk lasht time,” the doberman slurred. “So if I did it again, I thought I’d get to…get to wear that pretty outfit…again.” He belched. “Please?”

Max rubbed his forehead to keep the pounding headache this was becoming at bay.  Adrenaline was subsiding into pure annoyance.  That’s why there’d been that little game of psychological chicken back at work. Alby had been hoping he’d lose. He’d wanted to up the ante.

“Okay…” Max sighed.

Still on the ground. Alby’s eyes lit up.  “Really?”

“Not that kind of ‘okay’,” Max said. “I’m just not gonna call the cops or shoot you.”

“Really?” Alby looked torn between relief and worry.  Good. Let him sweat.

Max did not deign to answer that question.  He leaned over and held two fingers out. “How many fingers?”

“Two,” Alby said.

“Good.” He started patting down and pressing Alby’s chest and limbs.  “Any of this hurt?”

“Nuh huh.”

“Turn your head to the left and the right.” Max commanded.  Alby did that and more, giggling.  “I didn’t say make a snow angel, asshole.”  Alby froze.  Max bent over and hoisted Alby up.  “Stand up. It’s cold. I need you to walk.”

“Ho-kay.”  Alby was able to hold his own weight, but he had no balance. He kept leaning on Max for support lest he fall back down.  He was either concussed, even more drunk than the New Year’s Eve Party, or playing it all up for an excuse to practically hump Max’s leg. Maybe all three.  Max decided right then and there that if Alby did something stupid like go in for a kiss, he’d be short a few teeth.

Together the pair shuffled out of the cold and into the warmth of the farm house.  Max flipped the lights on and stood Alby up.  “Hold still,” he instructed. “Don’t go to sleep.”  Alby’s pupils were both the same size.  “Doesn’t look like you have a concussion.”  God really did look after children, drunks, and fools.  Alby was practically all three and nothing short of divine intervention explained his current condition.  “You’ll live.”

“Yaaaay…” Alby’s cheer came out as practically a whisper.  His eyes were getting droopy, and his body was starting to ragdoll.  “Can I pass out now, please?”

Max’s grunt and growl came out as a resigned sigh. “Sure.”

The young doberman needed no further permission.  He slumped over entirely and fell into Max’s arms.  “Thaaaaank yooooou…”

“Here we go again,” Max muttered. If he had had a nickel for how many times he was having to strip down an uninvited guest and put him to bed, he’d have two nickels. That wasn’t a lot, but it was weird that it had happened twice.  One way or another, Max resolved, there wouldn’t be a third time.

For the second time, he picked up the passed out man-pup and carried him up the stairs.  This time he carried Alby over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes instead of a cradled infant; his annoyance bleeding over into his treatment of the lout. Hopefully the dog would be a little more sore if not a little more wise in the morning.

Intrusively, Max thought that the way he was carrying Alby wasn’t that different from how parents carry their sleeping two year olds on a long day of shopping, but he chased that image right out of his head.  There may or may not be time for those sorts of thoughts later, but now was decidedly not the time.

The process was very similar to how it had been on New Year’s: Max stripped Alby’s clothes off, wiped him down, and dressed him in thick cotton training panties and childish pajamas.  It was more difficult than the first time because Alby had more layers this time and hadn’t had the courtesy to shimmy his pants down to his ankles first.  Max noted the jingle of Alby’s keys and dug around the discarded jeans to retrieve them.  The wipes were more than ceremonial.  Alby had pissed himself again and the wipes came back slightly yellow and discolored after making a pass over Alby’s junk. 

“This had better not become a habit,” Max grumbled.  If he were being honest with himself, Max would question who that comment had been directed at.

The panties were a light purple this time and the pajamas were a mint green.  Max wondered if Alby would notice, but then shook the question off as something silly.  Of course Alby would notice.  He’d obsessed over the last time to the point where he thought breaking and entering was a good idea.

When it was done, he put Max into bed on his side and gently tucked him in. He let out a loud groan that stifled into a yawn.  He wasn’t even forty yet, but the wolf was beginning to ache like he was fifty. The hardest part about the whole procedure was that he’d opted to do it all in the guest room instead of the nursery.  The changing table was higher off the ground and had all of the supplies in easy reach.  It was a wonder what pain could be avoided by not having to bend over for every little thing.  Max decided not to use his special space, however, because it felt like it would be rewarding Alby’s bad behavior.

He picked the cold and soiled clothes off the floor, turned the lights out, and closed the guest bedroom door behind him.  “Mother fucker,” he swore to himself. This had really gotten out of hand.  “Should’ve just kicked his ass or something.”

Max stopped just long enough to grab some gloves and a decent pair of pants.  He was cursing quietly to himself all the way back outside.  He grabbed the ladder Alby had brought and trudged through his yard back to the barn.  Animals hadn’t lived there since before he’d inherited the place and it functioned more or less as a storage shed.  “The fuck do I do now?”

Despite his cold and weariness, he went out into the street and found Alby’s car.  He cranked the heat all the way up and drove it back so that he could park it in his garage.  “I oughta just put that ass hole in here, roll down the windows and close the garage.”

He didn’t really mean that, of course, but murder was a darkly satisfying thought in that moment. Going with darkly satisfying thoughts and impulses had gotten him into this situation.  He’d meant to embarrass and humiliate the little shit so that he wouldn’t do it again.  What had happened instead was he’d created some kind of feedback loop. To a brat like Alby, any attention was good attention.

“What am I gonna do?”  Max had no idea how many times he’d asked himself that question tonight, whether it was inside his own head or out loud. 

Calling the cops made the most sense. It was the most practical solution. That’d get it to stop. So would reporting it to Madden Sr.  Neither of those felt right, to him.  Alby was an idiot and an ass, yes, but he wasn’t really a threat.  If Max thought it otherwise, he’d drop the hammer in a heartbeat and ruin the punk’s life.

He thought of a thousand other good reasons why it should end here and now, but Max’s own peculiar code of honor wouldn’t allow it. He wanted to handle this privately and relatively quietly, but he didn’t know how to. 

“When did I get roped into somebody’s goddamn slashfic?” he heard himself say back inside his own bedroom.  Boys climbing up ladders going on goddamn panty raids like it was some eighties college movie.  “I am getting way too old for this.”

It was past three in the morning, and Max knew himself well enough to know he’d be tossing and turning till sun up no matter how hard he tried. He dug out his phone and sent a quick email indicating that he was calling in sick tomorrow. Better to be an agitated wreck at home than at work. He wouldn’t be having any more dreams tonight, just revenge fantasies and problem solving scenarios to stop this nonsense from ever happening again.

Max didn’t know what the best thing to do would be. He only knew what he wanted to do.  Might as well try that, he supposed…

***********************************************************************************************
Alby’s crusted eyes shot open.  He tossed the blankets off like a kid on Christmas Day and dashed out the guest bedroom door and into the hallway.  His speed and fleetness of foot was not out of joy or excitement, however.  When he flung the door open he hooked right towards the bathroom instead of left towards the stairs.

Every single inch of Alby’s digestive tract was screaming at him. That had been the thing to wake him up. He ran to the toilet and didn’t even think to shut the door behind him. The first bits of bile and vomit were in his mouth just as he hung his head over the toilet.

He heaved burning chunks of whatever he’d had for dinner (mostly scotch) into the bowl. The splashback onto his muzzle did not help his constitution.  He flushed it away, stood up, turned around and dropped trou right as the other end emptied itself out beneath him.  He groaned in pain as more burning blobs shot out of him, his throat feeling scratchy and raw. 

As soon as he stopped, the stink of him hit his nose and that made his stomach spring back into action.  Thus the deadly dance of the porcelain throne started:  Puke, flush, turn, sit, shit, flush, stand, turn, bend, puke, and so on.  By the fourth chorus, each end of him was nothing but sound and fury; lots of heaving and staining, but nothing more was coming out to play.  Whatever pains were left inside of him had more to do with emptiness and irritation than a need to evacuate.

He ended the process sitting down with his face in his hands.  The sudden quiet gave his brain room to process how much his head throbbed and his eyes burned. He wasn’t even able to properly appreciate that he was in a similar yet different colored bedtime outfit from the night before. That meant Da-...Max had more than one.

As much as his mind stirred at the thought, it was very little comfort where his body was concerned.

“I am never drinking again,” Alby said to himself once he finally got the strength and the will to wipe himself.  He’d said it many times before this,  but this time he meant it.  He flushed one last time, pulled the training panties and pajama bottoms back up and hobbled to see himself in the mirror.  Needless to say, he did not look his best.  “Fuuuuuuuu…” he didn’t even have the strength to curse properly.  Never. Drinking. Again.

Lids blinked over burning eyes and a tongue that was closer to sand paper nervously licked at his chops.  Looking at himself, the full memory of what he’d done last night played itself back to a much more sober mind.

The scotch. The drive over. The scotch. The ladder. The scotch.  The attempted break in. The fall.  A very confused and angry Max.  Passing out. The voices in Alby's head were both silent, and the only one he had left was telling him just how messed up his actions had been and how fortunate he was that he wasn’t dead, fired, or in jail.

The latter two were still potentially on the table. He dry swallowed at that. Damn he was thirsty. He was sorely tempted to just turn the sink on and lap up the water.  Just as his eyes started to wander over to the faucet’s knob, he saw the cup of water and two aspirin left out for him.

Alby smiled weakly at that. He hadn’t even seen the wolf this morning, but already Max was looking out for him and leaving things to help. His tail wagged a little at that thought. It almost made Alby feel bad for what a jerk he’d been.  Almost…

The doberman took the aspirin and gulped down the glass without breathing.  He let out a satisfied gasp, refilled the glass and did it all over again.  He was tempted to go for a third helping, but his stomach gurgled a warning about tanking up. Instead he opted to splash his face a couple of times to help him wake up.

Once he toweled off, Alby slowly walked down the hallway, feeling more the trespasser and strangely at home simultaneously.  The aspirin kicked in quickly on his empty stomach and the pounding in his temples subsided so that he could more appreciate his surroundings and clothes.  Very soft. Very nice.  No sign of Max yet.  He paused back at the guest room to see if the aspirin had been the only thing left for him or if he just hadn’t noticed due to the rude awakening.

There was nothing in there that didn’t register to his frenzied brain and hungover body just before the bathroom dash.  The door to the secret room had been repaired, and was now padlocked for good measure. Alby thought it best if he didn’t try to open it or to check if Max was in the master bedroom.  Only one thing left to do.

Alby paused at the top of the stairs, and he took one last deep breath before going down.  His paws scritched and clicked against the wood, threatening to make him slip. The unsteady sensation caused him to grab hold of the hand rail.

It was all happening again, just like before, and the young Master Madden allowed himself one last dopey grin and a fantasy: What if this wasn’t the last time?  What if this was only the second time?  What if it  turned into some kind of game?  They’d ignore each other at work, then Alby could get antsy, and then drive up here and do something stupid.  Then he’d be carried away, redressed in comfortable pajamas and then have to perform some humiliating task in a frilly dress and have his picture taken so that they could be ‘square’.  Then everything would be fine again…until the next time.

He could keep it going as something that happened once a month.  Then twice. Then weekly…

Maybe he wasn’t done drinking, just yet.

The creak of the fifth stair from the top signaled his presence in a much less subtle way than the clicking of claws.  Alby froze and scolded himself. He was still chasing the car; no point in imagining what he might do if he caught it.  The sixth step was just as squeaky.  Again, Alby became statue still, wondering and hoping if he’d get caught.

“Come on down,” Max’s loud but calm voice called up to him.

Alby didn’t move. He was afraid to. He didn’t want to. Experimentally,  he sniffed the air but his nose detected none of the delicious smells of breakfast from the last visit.  Disappointing.
His back foot started to lift up and retrace his steps.  Mayube Max needed a little more time. It was still awfully early.

“Alby. Now.”

Alby’s body kept going down the stairs as if compelled by magic. There was no shouting. No anger. Not even an expectation. Max issued the command with such certainty, as if Alby’s obedience were just a statement of fact.  It had been forever since anyone had talked to him like that.

Without realizing it, Alby was starting to wag his tail again as he finished his descent.  Max was waiting for him. Alby’s tail stopped and his ears drooped. The wolf was dressed in a navy blue polo and khakis with brown loafers.  Everything from his clothing to his posture to his gaze looked so…adult. 

And the way Max looked at Alby; like a parent looking disappointed at their child; ashamed even. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him like that; including his father.  Albert Madden Sr. had stopped emotionally engaging and investing in Alby since his voice had started cracking. 

Seeing Max looking at him like that made him feel…bad. Really, really, bad! Awful. Worse than all of the hangover symptoms he’d experienced when they were at their peak.

“Hi…” Alby said sheepishly, staring at the floor.  Unbeknownst to him, his thumb started twitching nervously.

“You sober?”  Max asked, brusquely. 

“Yeah. Sor-.”

“Here.”  Max interrupted, holding Alby’s phone out to him.  “Work’s already started and you need to call in sick.”

Alby took the phone. “What? What do I say? What am I supposed to…?”  He’d taken personal days before, obviously, but he hadn’t even thought of work yet.  The juxtaposition of where he’d be calling and what he was wearing and who he was with rattled him.

The first trace of actual irritation crept into Max’s tone. “Just send an email to tell them you’re unavailable.  Or unlock your phone and I’ll do it for you.” 

“No, no.” Alby said. “I’ve got it. I’ve got it.”  He fumbled in the password and wrote a hasty one sentence email to work telling them not to expect him.  He hadn’t set up contingency plans for the day, but there was enough momentum and routine in place to make up for his absence. “There.”

Max had yet to withdraw his hand. The wolf’s paw remained out expectantly.  Alby placed it back in his host’s palm.   “Thank you,” Max said.  Fortunately, Alby was smart enough not to say ‘You’re welcome’.

He stared at Max’s shoes and took a deep breath.  “Look,” he said.  “I’m sorry.”  Alby waited for a reply. Max said nothing.  “I’m sorry,” He repeated, thinking he’d said the first one too softly.  It was only met with silence.  He lifted his head up so that he could look Max in the eye and found that the wolf had resumed his original firm but disappointed stance.

Alby broke off eye contact and waited for a reply.  He was hoping for Max to say something. Anything.  Chew him out. Cuss at him.  Threaten him.  Call him an idiot.  Anything. The silence was worse.

“I’m sorry,” Alby said again. Nothing. “I’m sorry.”  Still no reply. The pressure was building inside Alby and it had nothing to do with anything in his gut.  “Look, I screwed up okay!” he half-shouted.  “I was drunk and stupid, and-and-and I thought it would be funny!” His heart skipped a beat and he pressed on, not waiting for a response. “I haven’t been able to get what happened last time out of my head and I was hoping that maybe if it happened again maybe I could get it out of my system!”

“Out of your system?”  It was the first time Max had spoken since Alby had given his phone back.  How long ago had that been? Two minutes? An hour?

The doberman’s tail tucked between his legs and he hunched his head into his shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell.  “I’m sorry, man, okay? You have every right to be pissed off or hate me or some shit. I messed up! I’m messed up!  What I did was illegal and wrong and I’m sorry!   Call the cops if you want! Tell my dad! I’ll admit everything! I’m sorry! I’m messed up inside, man!  I’m messed up!”  Alby was close to crying, but he didn’t have it in him to let the tears flow.  He still couldn’t let his guard down.  He could tuck his tail, roll over, show his belly, and expose his throat, but he couldn’t let his guard down.

It was another uncomfortable collection of many many seconds until Alby got Max’s reply.  “I’m not calling the cops.”

Alby unshriveled a tad. “You’re not?

“Nope. Not telling your dad, either.”

Alby’s tail untucked and his ears perked up.  “No?”

“Uh-uh.”  Max finally seemed to loosen up.  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna be punished.”

The corners of Alby’s mouth fought to stay down. His tail stiffened and he resisted the urge to wag it again.  “I’m in trouble?”  Yessssssssss!

Max took Alby by the wrist and led him out towards the living room. “Come on.”  It was only when Max turned his head all the way around that Alby allowed himself a smirk.  He’d been bad, sincerely admitted it, and was being rewarded with a treat disguised as a trick.

Or was it?

Alby was led into Max’s living room.  He scanned the area but saw no sign of a certain frilly maid’s dress.  Maybe he’d have to do something embarrassing in an elegant ballgown?  “Where’s the dress?”

Max seated himself smack in the middle of his couch, but kept a firm hold of the younger man’s hand.  “No dress.”

“Then what am I going to-?” Alby was yanked roughly off balance. “DOOOOOOOOO?”  He tripped and landed smack dab on the wolf’s lap, belly first. Instinctively he tried to roll and wriggle away or push himself off.  He was trapped when Max pinned him down to his lap with whis forearm.  “Huh?”

Alby wanted to ask what was going on, but more questions flooded his mind before his mouth could form the first. Like what was happening to his pants?  He struggled and looked back over his shoulder and managed just enough to see what he was feeling: Max was using his free hand to roughly yank the mint green pajama bottoms and the light purple cotton panties off his waist and all the way down past his knees. 

“Stop,” the wolf ordered. Alby froze, practically compelled as if by magic.

His mouth was not stilled, though. “Why?”

FWAP!

A painful stinging slap sounded across Alby’s backside. “Ow!” Alby yelped. It hurt, sure, but it was more the surprise than the pain that caught his attention.  “What-?”

FWAP!

A second one stung Alby. It was just as intense as the first and impacted him in almost the exact same spot. This made it hurt a little worse.  “Ow! Fu-!” 

FWAP!

Again! Same spot! Just as hard! More pain!

“Language!” Max barked.

FWAP!

Somehow he’d found away to hit harder!

“AWOOOOOOO!” Alby howled in shock and pain. Something finally clicked. “Are you spanking me?”

Three more thunderous slaps were given in reply, making Alby tense up and grit his teeth.  A spanking? Really?!  This wasn’t hot or sexy. This wasn’t hot at all!  Alby hadn’t been spanked since he was a little kid, and even then it was only done by a Nanny in careful, counted, measured strokes so that he’d know when it was over. No more than two or three. Not this rapid reign of hellfire on flesh!

  He hadn’t asked for this! He hadn’t wanted this!

FWAP!

Okay. Maybe he’d asked for this.

“STOP!” he yelled. 

FWAP!

“STAAAAAAAHP!”

FWAP!

Alby started clawing at the cushes and kicking his legs, trying to get out from Max’s grip and off of his lap.  Max had already adjusted his grip and pressed his body tightly up against Alby’s midsection with his cinching the young man tightly.

Alby’s attempts to get away only gave Max an excuse to pick up the pace.

FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP! FWAP!

“MOTHER FU-!”

FWAP!

“I SAID WATCH YOUR  LANGUAGE!” Max roared and picked up the pace. Each spanking thundered in his ears and stung his bottom like a giant hornet plunging its stinger into him again and again and again.

Again. And again. And again.

Again!

FWAP!

And again!

FWAP!

And again!

FWAP!

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!” Alby shrieked.

Max seemed to disagree and was proven correct.

“I DON’T DESERVE THIS!”

Max disagreed with that as well, and once again, was proven correct by the results. Alby’s flesh was bruising, and the burning warmth with each stroke was spreading further and further away from the source of impact. All over his skin, down to his toes and all the way up to his head.

“I’M AN ADULT!”

If Max recognized that, it wasn’t shown by his actions. The wolf was short on words.

So was Alby. “I….AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE!”  He’d never felt this powerless before.  He’d never been this powerless.  Out of control, sure.  He liked being out of control.  But it had been a literal dog’s age since Alby Madden Jr. had felt truly and utterly powerless and at the mercy of someone that couldn’t be bought, bullied, or bargained with.

““STOP!” Alby begged, on the verge of tears. “PLEEEEEASE!”

To which Max quietly, but firmly replied, “No.”

Alby broke and sobbed openly while tears burst forth from his eyes.  He had lost count; had no idea how long he’d lasted; but Alby broke down started bawling like a baby then and there.  There were no more words.  Just crying.  Just sorrow and regret and adrenaline, and a stinging pain that spread its aftershocks everywhere to the point where the only way to stop himself from feeling light headed was to scream louder.

It was incredibly liberating. Cathartic even.  Something spasmed inside him as he continued to yowl and howl and cry.

******************************************************************************************************

Max didn’t count the swats he’d delivered.  Only the seconds. In his head he kept a steady and reliable count, as easy and regular as every heart beat.  Seventy-four…seventy-five…seventy-six….seventy-seven.

He didn’t believe in corporal punishment for children.  He’d never been spanked himself before he got into the scene.  But maybe if somebody had beat Alby’s ass earlier, Max wouldn’t have to be doing it in the here and now.

When Alby stopped protesting and trying to get off of Max’s lap, he switched cheeks.  It was the closest thing to mercy that he cared to show.  When the brat’s screams and sobs became soundless, he paused for two whole seconds and then targeted the thighs.  He didn’t want to cause any lasting damage, he just wanted the so-called Office Manager to have to sit down very slowly and carefully for the next few days.

It wasn’t the most rational desire, Max realized, but damn it felt good.  One way or another, Alby wasn’t gonna pull this crap again.

Two hundred thirty-eight…two hundred thirty-nine….four minutes.  That oughta be enough.  Max stopped completely, but held firm to the dog’s waist.  Alby was still quietly, breathlessly sobbing into the couch cushions as expected.  He twitched and sobbed and twitched and sobbed, occasionally tensing up and waiting for a swat that wasn’t coming. He kept his hands well out of the line of fire, however.  No trying to rob his bottom or to intercept Max’s hands.

Smart kid.

“Alright,” he said softly.  “That part’s done.”  He released his grip and patted Alby on the back between his shoulder blades.  “Get up.’

“O-o-o-okay!” Alby stammered.  He only moved when Max nudged him up.  When he stood up, Max got a look at his face, with his muzzle wet and matted with tears and gobs of snot dripping out of his nose and bubbling with each breath. 

Alby wiped his nose with the back of his forearm and Max did not correct him. When he bent slightly as if to pull his pajama bottoms up, the wolf shot him a warning look.  “Nuh-uh.”   Alby stood up straighter. “Good.”  Max pointed to over to an empty corner.  “Now, March.”

“Ye-ye-yes D-”

“I said ‘march’.” Max cut him off.

Head down, and his pants now in a puddle down to his ankles, Alby shuffled all the way into the corner. “O-o-okay…”

“Nose in the corner,” Max said evenly. “Hands above your waist. Don’t even think of touching it.”

“Y-y-y-yessir.”

“Now you just stand there, little boy. Stand there and think about what you’ve done.”  Max waited for an affirmative and got none.  “Understand?”

“Y-y-y-yes…” Alby cut himself off with a massive, wailing sob, and then finished his sentence. “YES DADDY!”  Whimpering and whining, he stuck his thumb into his mouth and started sucking on it like a two year old that hadn’t weaned yet.

Max blanched, and did his best to conceal a snarl.  “I’m going to the bathroom.” 

He quietly stepped away from the living room and went to the half bath on the ground floor, slammed the door shut, locked it and turned on the water before he said anything else.

“Holy fuck,” Max hissed.  “The fuck did I just do?”

He’d just beaten another man so badly that he’d called him Daddy, that’s what. And it was the boss’s son.  And just like everything before it had come so naturally.  Was Alby already a thumb sucker, or was that something that Max had somehow dragged and teased out of him accidentally?

“Jesus….” he growled. Damn that was intense! It’d been years since he’d gotten to do anything like that; gotten close enough to someone to even think about doing that.  Just why did it have to be Alby friggin Madden Jr.?

Max started to run his palms under the faucet.  He moved to splash some water on his face but stopped cold when he noticed something clinging to his inner forearm.  It was white and gooey like certain kinds of hair gel.  Except Max didn’t use hair gel.

There was more of it on the front of his khakis, too.

Alby had cum all over Max’s lap in the middle of the spanking.

Max had promised himself that Alby’s bullshit was going to stop one way or another.  Based on the contents of his lap, it looked like it was going to be ‘another’.

“Fucking hell.”

 

[Is late potty training becoming the norm in society]

22 minutes ago, spark said:

As a teacher, I can attest that Covid regression bubble is a thing.   My 9th graders all seemed to be so young in 2021, almost like they were still in Elementary school.  They were not even close to being ready for high school.   I keep thinking that it will get better, but each year it gets worse.  Their social maturation is not growing at the same rate.  The 9th graders last year were less mature than 2021, and this year is like having 6th graders.   My friend is a 3rd grade teacher and he says that his group is very immature. 

I don't know what that means for the potty training, but I suspect that's also happening.  Part of it is that these parents didn't learn to say no to their kids, so I don't want to is a good enough reason for a lot of children right now.   

I'm not sure about any of you, but I was never given that privilege growing up.  If I said, "I don't want to."  My dad would, "It doesn't matter, you're doing it anyway."

I'll throw in, that I don't think it's just entitled or bad parents.  I think it's highly unlikely that an entire generation didn't learn to parent correctly.  It's a symptom, but it's reductive and not the cause. 

I think part of it is that people have less *time* to parent, unfortunately.  Everyone is always working and struggling and exhausted so the buck gets passed and the can gets kicked down the road.  Responsibilities at work keeps going up but not pay.  Time for job keeps increasing. Literally everything else gets cut, including teaching basic with kids.  It's hard to raise someone up when you're barely keeping your head above water.

That's not an excuse or a pardon. It's an analysis.

Otherwise it's saying that Boomers and Gen-X somehow raised a generation of adults who don't know how to survive and parent and that's ruining Gen Alpha etc.

So who's the fuckup?  The current generation of parents or the generation that raised them?  

Or maybe, just maybe, outside forces have interfered and made life in general more difficult for everybody, and what's going on here is another symptom.
 

[Sunny]

A strong opening with organic worldbuilding.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

1 hour ago, Hollis Fox said:

I just went back to Ch 66 and I caught the reference. I thought it was just psychological gaslighting at first, because the Amazons don’t “hear” the bell, like at the baby shower. But now I realize that it’s both psychological and physiological gaslighting. So the Amazons definitely know that the bell toys are destructive to Littles.

This.  It's a mixture.  

[Mami's Boy (Complete)]

Heat…

Dominik was plopped down into a giant makeshift baby carriage.  ‘Makeshift’ didn’t do it justice.  ‘Custom’ was more like it. Its wheels belonged to wheelchairs. Its bed was a soft foam child’s mattress, just barely big enough for him to fit in.  Its siding and rails were upholstered in black leather with thick steel mesh from several shopping carts, and the canopy over his head had more in common with a convertible roof.  

Taken all together, Dom was most definitely being dumped into a much larger version of a classic baby buggy; the kind seen mostly in cartoons.

Dominik felt like a cartoon character, just then.  He was wearing a bonnet and a onesie. And underneath the onesie was crinkling, almost completely dry diaper.  The dryness was in spite of his bladder pleading, begging, screaming, and now actively fighting against him for release.  The ‘almost’ was because it had already gotten a few good hits in.  

The thing about cartoons though, Dominik thought, was that usually the character who looked like this wasn’t exactly what someone would call ‘a winner’.  Laying there on the pristine white sheets, feeling dreadfully exposed in the open air, ‘winner’ is not how Dominik would describe himself in this moment.

Rhea circled around. “Here we go, baby boy, she taunted him.  She threw a sky blue blanket- correction: a blankie- over Dominik’s  bare legs. Dominik grabbed it like it was a life preserver and yanked it up to his head.  Doing so only left his naked legs on display.

Shit!

He settled for covering his legs and hoping the canopy would do the rest of the job.  “Where are we going?” he practically squeaked.

“You’ll see, Dom Dom,” Rhea darkly chuckled. “You’ll see.”

Rhea disappeared behind the novelty carriage and things started moving. Rhea, Bailey, and Alexa all started chattering just out of sight. 

Dom didn’t listen to it. Couldn’t. Every bit of gray matter between his ears was overwhelmed to make sense of anything.  

His ears listened for footsteps. Save for the shuffling of sneakers behind him, there were none. There was the sound of passing cars, but only in the distance.  His eyes peeled and his head swiveled looking for people; additional witnesses to his humiliation.  None of those, either. Not for the moment.

There were cars in people’s driveways and parallel parked on the streets, but no people that he could see.  Anxiety, forbid that Dominik look too hard or  lean out too far.  If people were watching from inside their homes or on their doorsteps, the young man would only be able to see them if he poked his head out from beneath the carriage’s canopy. Problem was, if he could see them, they could see him.

He wasn’t the most famous wrestler in the world- he was no Rock, John Cena, or Undertaker- but if a picture of him like this made its way on the internet, he’d be done.  Fuck! The girls already had taken pictures of him. On the changing table and in Rhea’s arms, his diaper in full view and easily identifiable.

Dominik mentally checked himself.  It wasn’t HIS diaper…it’s not like he chose to wear it.  Not like he bought it or anything. Not like he put it on himself.  Not like babies did any of that stuff, either.

FUCK!

If only he worked with a mask like his dad. Nobody had seen his dad’s face on T.V. since 1999 and twenty extra years disguised Rey’s natural appearance even better than any mask.

Compounding all of this was the raging protest still going on between his legs, compounded now by the milk he’d been forced to chug making its way to an already full bladder.  His senses were frazzled besides. Alcohol was good for unconsciousness but not great for R.E.M sleep. Rehydration to recover from the effects of a hangover took time and milk was far from the best thing for it.
Domink Mysterio was outnumbered, had been out planned, and was outgunned on so many levels.  There was no good move for him to make, so he settled for staying still.  However, the question yet lingered…

“Mami…” he said. No reply came. He was only speaking at just above a whisper, but out in the open with how embarrassing everything was, his own words sounded to him as if amplified by a bullhorn.  The girls kept talking and laughing.A lot.  Lots of laughing.

Whether they were deliberately ignoring him, or just couldn’t hear him, was impossible to decide. “Mami!” He felt like he was screaming, but in truth he was only speaking slightly louder than before.

Mercifully, she responded. “What’s that, Dom Dom?”

“Where are we going?”

“I already told you, baby,” she said. “It’s a surprise.”

“Will there be a bathroom there?” It was a stupid roundabout request, but he felt like his eyeballs were floating.

“AWWW!” the women cooed loudly enough to make Dominik shake in fright. The buggy drew too much attention already!  

“He wants to use the potty like a big boy!” Alexa mocked.

“Wants to be just like his Mami!” Bailey piled on.

“I definitely don’t think he’s ready for it,” Rhea commented. “He was a bedwetter till he was six!”  

The resulting cackles made his skin crawl. How did they know about that? Did they get that from his dad? Was his dad in on this?! Dominik pouted out his lip out in confusion. Was it even true? Dominik literally couldn’t remember when he stopped wetting the bed. It wasn’t something anybody had made fun of him for growing up.  He only knew that his little sister kept wetting the bed for a while after she was otherwise potty trained. It was just something that happened with little kids.  Was he being gaslighted?

The pang in his bladder turned into an all out gong. Another little dribble eeked its way out of his penis and into the front of his diaper.  Holding it in automatically was becoming less and less of an option.  Dominik was forced to switch to manual.  

Crinkling and rustling in the carriage Dominik brought his knees up and balled himself up into a fetal position. He sat up halfway and slapped his hands over his padded crotch, holding himself like a preschooler who had to go but didn’t know what the next step was.  The onesie prevented him direct access to himself, so he had to make due by pressing down as hard as he could through all the plastic backed padding.  It didn’t help much; still better than nothing.

Bailey jogged up to the side and looked inward. “Uh oh!”  Bailey said far too loudly. “I think little Dom Dom is trying to play with himself!”

To be fair, it was easy enough to make that assumption. He was covered in a blankie from the waist down, and his hands had plunged beneath it. He looked incredibly guilty.  To be real, Bailey was totally fucking with him. 

“No!” he screeched, outraged and panicking that someone would hear them. “I’m just trying to…hold it in.”

“Don’t be silly, Dom Dom.” Rhea said, still behind him.  “You’re too little to hold it in. You must be playing with yourself.” The carriage stopped. Dominik felt it jostle slightly, a braking mechanism.  “No worries, Mami’s got something to handle that.”

“Nooooo!” Dominik howled. He tried to make a run for it. He didn’t know what was coming, but was certain he wasn’t going to like it.  The hot gravel scorching his feet was infinitely preferable to whatever these three cooked up.

Poor Dom didn’t even get one foot all the way out of the buggy. Bailey and Alexa hooked him under the arms and slammed him back down on the soft mattress.  He kicked and screamed.

Rhea walked around to the other end of the carriage so that she was standing and staring directly at him.  “Dom Dom,” she said with an air of menace, “I know you’re curious and want to explore down there, but we don’t do that in public.  It’s perfectly natural, but we don’t do it when we’re out and about.  Understand?”

Dominik swallowed. “Yes…Mami.”

“Good boy.”  He noticed a bright blue diaper bag on her shoulder.  She opened it and started digging around, giving Dominik a good look at the folded white rectangles within easy reach..  She was serious about this!  “Where did I put -? Ah! Here we are!”  She took out two pairs of handcuffs. Dom had seen something like those before; they just weren’t normally baby blue.  What he’d never seen before today were the mittens.

“No! No, no, no!”  

Bailey and Alexa pressed him down and kept him prone. One at a time, Rhea placed the thick, padded, restrictive gloves on his hands reducing them to little more than cushioned hooves, and finished it off by handcuffing inside the buggy.  He was left splayed out horizontally in an almost crucifix position.  

“I know you can’t control yourself, baby boy,” Rhea said, patronizingly. “So these will help.”
These didn’t ‘help’ anything. They only made things more difficult. The mittens left his hands useless.  If he was going to grab anything, Dom would need to use both arms; his fingers and thumbs bound and immobilized; his hands practically stumps. The things looked so rounded and bulky he doubted he could have so much as mashed an elevator button with any kind of accuracy.  

The added handcuffs made the gloves practically pointless. Whatever the gloves were supposed to accomplish in the long run, the handcuffs did one better in the short.  Dominik could neither escape, nor prevent himself from having an accident by applying pressure downstairs. Both forms of restraints required a key to lock and unlock them.

“He tried to make a run for it too, Rhea,” Alexa reminded her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I saw that too.”  Out came the matching booties. Just as thick as the mittens.

What the hell would the booties accomplish?  He didn’t exactly grab stuff with his feet. He didn’t have to ask.  Rhea showed him.  “There we go,” she said in a sing-song sort of way. “Keep your toesies nice and comfy.”  She gave a forceful press up against the soles of his feet.

Dominik clenched his teeth and hissed. He didn’t yelp or yip or scream, but it took conscious effort. Some sicko had lined the insides of these things with some kind of blunted metal spikes!   If Dominik put literally any weight on the bottom of his feet, it’d be like stepping on Legos.  Like the mittens, the booties were also impossible to remove without the key soon put away in the pocket of Rhea’s diaper bag.

“Nice and cozy?” Rhea asked.

Dominik nodded, woefully frightened. “Yes, Mami.”

“Good. We’re almost there.”

The carriage jostled, and they started moving once more.. Dominik broke out into a sweat that had nothing to do with the heat, or his non-breathable clothes.

Trapped in his rolling bed, he started panting anxiously, trying to look out for threats despite being completely unable to avoid them.  He couldn’t believe what was happening!  He started trying to calm himself.  

“This is a rib,” he said to himself. This is just a rib. It’s just a rib. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

A sharp right turn and a large one story brick building came into focus. Big open windows for letting sunlight inside. Decorative animal statues on the grass by the sidewalk. A cement awning with greek style pillars holding it up.  The place had definite Upper Middle Class Public Library energy.  

Cars were in the parking lot. People were here! And the carriage was making a bee-line for the front doors!

“Community Center” the large permanent sign out front read. The double doors were blacked out and papered over.  A sign by them read  “Closed Today for Private Event.”

Bailey and Alexa jogged forward, holding open the doors.  “Right this way, cutie!” Bailey chirped.

“This is a rib,” Dominik hissed to himself. “This is a rib, this is a rib, this is a rib.”

The inside of the building went dark as soon as the doors shut behind them. Only a few shafts of errant sunlight let Dominik see where he was being taken. He made out the rough boxy outline of what he assumed was some kind of reception or information desk.

Rhea’s accomplices opened yet another set of double doors, these appearing to be made out of heavy carved wood instead of papered over glass.  “Almost there…” Alexa taunted him.

“What are-?” 

“Shhhhhh,” Rhea hushed him.  “Just try to enjoy the ride, Dom Dom.”

It was darker inside this room. There were no windows to let it in light from the outside.  It might as well have been a tomb once the doors were closed.  

The metal clunking of a latch being put into place.  Hushed, unfamiliar whispers in the darkness. Wheels creaking to a halt.

“This is a rib.  This is a rib. This is a rib.”

The lights flicked on and the room came to life.

“SURPRIIIIIIIIIIISE!”

Dominik found himself in the middle of a banquet hall. Half a dozen of his coworkers, all women, surrounded him, holding gift wrapped boxes as well toothy, gleeful, malicious smiles.  Things that couldn’t be held decorated the periphery. Tables were dotted with teddy bears tethering ‘It’s a Boy’ balloons. In the back, right where he could see it, Dominik read a banner.  “CONGRATULATIONS MAMI!”

This wasn’t a rib. This was an execution.  

The surprise, shock, and the toll of time and added fluids on Dominik’s bladder caused the dam to finally break. Liquid heat surged out of him and into the front of his formerly fresh diaper. Domini’s face melted and constricted in agony as piss poured out of him, splashing up against his privates before being quickly and quietly soaked up and wicked away. Dominik went deathly still in the carriage, too overwhelmed and too potty trained to move and pee at the same time. Part of him fantasized that maybe if he didn’t move, no one would be able to see him or know that he was pissing. Surely, kicking and screaming would be an admission of guilt.

Simultaneously, Dominik’s eyes took in and registered his newest tormentors: Zelina Vega; Nikki Bella; Carmella; Liv Morgan; Becky Lynch; Dakota Kai.  It was a VIP who’s who of women Dominik never wanted to piss off.  All wore normal street clothes instead the colorful tights audiences had grown accustomed to seeing them wear on television over the years. To Dom, that was more frightening than if they were in their ring attire.  Had they been dressed in boots, tights, and bustiers, Dom could have told himself that this was a work; a performance. 

This? Whatever was about to happen, this was for real. 

A few additional seconds of uncomfortable silence and nervous giggling. Dominik was only able to find his voice after he’d finished peeing. “Mami,” he screeched, “what’s going on? I’m sorry!” 

His question/apology was instantly countered with a tidal wave of “AWWWWWWWW!”  The noise of now nine women mock fawning over his every syllable was like nails on a chalkboard to Dominik.

The young man winced and tired (but failed) not to blush. Drenched in his own urine, trapped in a carriage, yet somehow still ‘cute’. This was what it was like to be a baby.  

“Look how cute he is!”

“With the little bonnet!”

“So precious!”

“Did we wake you up from your nap, little guy?”

“He looks so happy to be here!”

“Of course he is! Rhea’s little Dom Dom just loves attention!”

Their phones were all out, snapping blackmail pic after blackmail pic. Dominik made it all the way to twenty-six years old..  Whelp…he’d had a good run. Life over now.

“Oh my gosh, is he actually wearing a diaper!”

“Is he wet?”

“Of course he is!”

Dominik did his best to hide his face, tucking his chin and burying it in his own bicep.  It failed miserably due to the handcuffs.

“Oh yeah.”  That one came from Nikki.  The  question about the state of his pants and the first confirmation were from Dakota and Zelina respectively.  “Trust me,” Bella twin said. “Dry diapers don’t get that kind of puffy.”  The other newcomers, all who’d had children of their own, nodded sagely in agreement.  

Dominik almost vomited in embarrassment. He hadn’t noticed the way his diaper had swelled up like a sponge.  Even now, it was getting tighter and tighter, the diaper straining against the onesie containing it as the pulp inside absorbed the last of his leavings.

Rhea walked around from the back of the carriage. She stood by one side so she could reach him, but angled herself so she was staring directly at him.  “Dom Dom,” she said. “You got into a nasty little habit of calling me ‘Mami’ when you clearly knew it was bothering me.”

“I’m sorry!” 

Her finger pressed up against his lips; silencing him. “I’m. Not. Done. Talking.”  Dominik gulped his words down.  She went on.  “But after thinking about it and having a little talk with the girls, I decided that I wasn’t going to get mad…” still in a sort of character, she let there be silence where most people would have said something about getting even.

“So you want me to be your Mami?” Rhea purred, her voice husky and full with a kind of cruel lust.  “Okay.  But what’s the point of being your Mami if I’m not going to have…”

“A BABY SHOWER!” The other women all cheered in unison.

“I’m sorry! I want out!” Dominik begged.

Rhea smirked and wagged her finger. “No take backs.”

“I don’t want this! I never wanted this!”  

Rhea gave a half hearted shrug. “Too bad.”

“I wasn’t asking to be a baby!”

“Nobody ever does.”

“Yeah, but I was trying to call you Mami in like…the sexy way!”

The room went silent.  “You know I have a boyfriend, right?” Rhea asked, hands on her hips. “That’s not the save you think it is.”

Dominik’s forehead broke out into a cold sweat.  “I’m sorry Mami!” He quivered. “I don’t know what I was talking about!” He laughed, nervously. “I’m just a baby!”  His self-debasement was rewarded with giggles all around.

Rhea leaned in so close that she could have bit off Dom’s nose.  “It’s okay, baby boy,” she said. “Mami knows.”  A wolfish grin flashed.  “Okay ladies,” she said standing up.  We’ve got ourselves our first baby shower game.  We’ve got our new baby!  He’s got a wet nappy! Who can guess how long he is?” 

 Snickers all around. 

 Rhea laughed too, but at the guests. “Babies can’t stand, you ninnies. It doesn’t make sense to guess how tall he is!”  Dom’s heart sank.  He couldn’t stand at present.  Not without being in agony.  Speaking of his gimmicked booties, his heart raced down to the soles of his feet when Rhea said.  “Winner gets to change him.”

“Oooooooooooooo!” The ladies all said, looking at one another mischievously. Dominik, of course, was far less enthused.  

“Phones away,” Rhea commanded. “Let’s do this right.”

Becky Lynch pocketed hers first. “No more pictures?”

“No more Googling!” 

Bailey smacked her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

The contenders stood shoulder to shoulder.  “We’re doing this Price Is Right style. Left to right, no copying. Closest gets the honor.”

Dominik wasn’t sure who, if anyone, he wanted to win. He watched them watching him, literally measuring him up, possibly trying to remember him standing in their minds’ eyes and comparing him.  Dominik shut his eyes and hoped for the least worst if not the best.

“Five foot ten.”

“Five eleven.”

“Twenty inches!” That got some surprised laughs.

“Not even close,” Rhea said, “but I like your commitment.”  She continued down the line.

“Six foot.”

“Six…two?”

“Six-one.”

“Five foot six.”  

Eyes still closed, Dominik suppressed a scowl.  He wasn’t Undertaker tall but he wasn’t that short! He almost said as much and then remembered he was stuck stewing in giant pissed-in pampers.

Alexa bit her lip. “Seventy…three…inches.”

“CORRECT!”

“Hey!” Carmella complained. “That’s the same as six foot one!”

Alexa stepped out of line and stuck her tongue out.  “Yeah,  but babies are measured in inches!”

Rhea shrugged and handed the diaper bag over to Alexa. “Woman’s got a point.’

“You probably don’t even know how to change a diaper!” Dakota jeered, playfully. 

Alexa took this as a cue. “It’s not that hard.” She skipped up to the side of the carriage and stopped parallel to Dominik’s thighs, putting his diaper area in easy reach. “First you unsnap the onesie.”  Her fingers plunged between Dominik’s spread legs and opened up the onesie one snap at a time.  “Then you shimmy it up past the baby’s belly button so you can get to the diaper.”

She roughly hiked it up past the diaper. Unlike with an actual baby, she gave his thighs little taps and prods and pinches, hinting that if Dominik knew what was good for him he’d help her.  Dominik lifted his legs into the air and boosted his hips as best he could so that Alexa could slide the onesie back up and over the smooth soft plastic on his bottom.

Dominik exhaled and lowered his legs back down. She dug around in the diaper bag for a moment. “You wanna make sure you have the fresh diaper and wipes and stuff already out before you open the diaper up.”  Her voice suddenly leapt up into a cutesy nasally pitch. “Don’t want our widdle Dom Dom to turn into a fountain and go wee-wee!”  

Oh gosh! She was narrating!  Saying everything out loud! Making his humiliation plain! Talking like he couldn’t understand what was going on!

Approving laughter paired side by side with Dom’s mortification.  “How am I doing, moms?” she asked in her normal speaking voice. There were polite nods and thumbs up from the women who’d had more experience with diapering.

Rhea interrupted her.  “Ladies, why are you standing so far away? Gather round, gather round!”

And so they did. They formed a perimeter.  Dominik was restrained, and penned in by bodies.  And none of them were paying overmuch attention to his face.

“Okay,” Alexa chirped. “Then you gotta take off the tapes.”

RRRRIP

RIIIIIP

RIP

RRRR-RRRR-IIIIIII-PP

From staccato to legato, each bit of sticky tape coming off the old diaper made him feel so much worse.  “Then you open up the diaper!”  Alexa reached forward and peeled back the front of his diaper, exposing his manhood to all.

 It was cold.  It was wet.  People were staring.  The diaper was so sodden and soggy that it practically oozed off.  The air conditioning was set on high.

Any and all of those reasons were reasons Dominik Mysterio gave himself for why he shivered so when exposed and why certain things may or may not have been as big as he imagined them to be.

Everyone was looking at him! Not AT him, but at him. Why were they staring? He didn’t have anything that they hadn’t seen before, right?  What were they whispering about all of a sudden?  They were are adults here, weren’t they?

Wasn’t he?

“He might be scared, so it’s important to talk to him,” Alexa continued her ‘lesson’.  “It’s okay Dom Dom.  I’m just gonna get you out of that icky wet diaper and clean you up so you’re nice and dry.”  She spoke in her cutesy, babying voice.  “Auntie Alexa will make it aaaaallll better.”

“Oooooooo!” The girls howled and pointed. “I think he likes it!”

To his unending shame, part of him was reacting to the baby talk and cooing in a decidedly non-babyish way.  With no pain in his bladder, his manhood was acting more receptive to the presence of so many beautiful women giving him their full and enthusiastic attention. Not even the coldness of the wipes being dragged and dabbed across his cock.

Alexa didn’t break character. “It’s okay. It’s natural.”  To her friends, she said “It’s not like he knows what to do with it anyway.  That bit of a barb relieved some pressure in a most unpleasant and unsatisfying way.

“You wipe the front first,” she said. She prodded him to lift his legs. “Then you wipe the bottom.  And you slip the old pee-pee diaper away and ball it up.”

Dominik did his best to cross his legs and hide his shame in the interim, to little effect.

“Then you take the fresh diaper and unfold it,” Alexa continued,  “and slip it on under the baby’s bum.  And set him down gently on it.”  Dominik sighed, ironically appreciating the difference in texture between the old and new diapers, yet screaming internally that he was in a state to be able tell the difference.

“Then you dust him off with some powder,” Alexa cooed. “Want the baby to smell cute and not like pee-pee.”  Dominik thought he heard an aside about how more of the men’s locker room needed to smell like baby powder.  “And then you just spread his legs, pull the diaper back up and tape everything back into place.”

Dominik laid there for a four-count, one for each tape. Then his hips were lifted, and his buttons re-snapped. “All done!”  The assembled tormentors all clapped and cheered politely 

“Very good job, Alexa,” Rhea praised, taking the diaper bag away from her cohort. “You’re a natural.”

Alexa did a mock bow and then said. “I couldn’t have done it without Dom Dom. He was such a good little baby, no crying at all!” 

Rhea beamed. “Good point. Newborns normally aren’t so cooperative.” Dominik felt his guts twist. Was he going to get punished for not putting up enough of a fight?  There was no winning with them!   “Maybe my baby Dom Dom is bigger than I expected…”

Dominik blinked.  Was he hearing her correctly? Was she giving him an out? A way to age up?

His ‘Mami’ seemed to confirm his hopes. “Who wants to see if the baby can crawl?”

Hands shot up all around, and jeering cries of “I do!” and “Me-me-me-me-me!” rang out.  

Rhea dug back into the diaper bag and produced the key. “Sounds like the me-me-mes have it.”  To Bailey she quietly said, “Set the cones up,” and circled round to Dominik’s bound wrists.  The key was the one that went to Dom’s handcuffs and not to the mittens and booties.  Freed from the former, he remained firmly imprisoned in the latter.  “Help him out ladies,” she ordered casually and strolled away. They were only too happy to oblige.

Hands descended on him, lifting him up out of the custom carriage by the arms until he was dangling from Becky and Liv’s shoulders like a scarecrow on posts.  Out of habit, he let himself be lowered down to his feet, and instantly regretted it.

“Ow ow ow ow!”  Yup! Just like stepping on a bunch of legos.  He couldn’t untangle himself fast enough so that his knees could buckle and he could sink all the way to the smooth ballroom floor.  

The comments came immediately

“Someone’s too little to walk.”

“Poor thing!”

“He can crawl, though!”

Hammering the hint home, Rhea had stopped her leisurely stroll across the room and parked herself but to what Dominik’s addled brain could best be described as a rainbow colored flying saucer crossed with a sex swing.  “Come on, baby!” she called all the way across the room. “Come to Mami!”  She hunched over and patted her knees, beckoning him like a dog…or a baby just learning to crawl.  

Might as well get this over with.

Teeth gritted, and head tilted down to the floor, Dominik crawled on hands and knees towards Rhea while eight other women taunted and attempted to humiliate him.

“Such a good baby!”

“Look at him crawling straight to his Mami!”

“Look at that little tush up in the air.”

“They are so cute at this age!”

This part? Right at this moment? This part was easy. Dominik had gotten used to playing the slimy heel.  Taunts and jeers could just roll off his back.  An individual’s scorn hurt way less than the mockery and derision of a crowd.  Outnumbered as he was and the center of attention, there were just enough overlapping voices for him to tune the entire thing out.  

Dom’s retreat inside himself lasted only as long as it took him to reach Rhea’s knees. He came to a stop, and stayed there, waiting for the next command, panting like a tired dog.  There’s a reason most people walked upright. Crawling actually required more coordination and effort. Twice the energy with only a quarter of the speed.  

Unable to sit back on his heels, Dominik looked up at his Mami and felt her presence as strongly as if she were stomping down on his spine.  “Good baby!” she pseudo-praised.  “Think you’re big enough to race?”

“Race?” Dominik said, uncertainly. “Against who?”  The idea of getting into a crawling match with someone sounded out of place.

Rhea took her phone back out and punched in a few buttons.  “Just the clock.”  She turned her phone around, now on a stopwatch countdown screen.  A mere forty-five seconds clocked in. “Let’s see how big you are.”

Hazing. This was hazing. Dominik knew it when he saw it.  It was twisted, but this was a test. Just a form of ‘paying his dues’.  But if it was, that meant there had to be a way out. Something to do to satisfy them so that he could get his dignity back.  “What do you I gotta do,  Mami?”

Pure satisfaction came to Rhea’s face. “Such a smart baby!” she ruffled the bonnet on his head.  “You’re Auntie Bailey has put little cones all around the room.”  She squatted down to Dominik’s eye level and pointed.  “See?”

Dominik followed Rhea’s finger and saw a little orange traffic cone, the kind used for kiddie soccer drills and the like.  “Yeah…”

“We’ve got a little track,”  Rhea told him.  “Like an obstacle course.”  Dominik scanned the room. He didn’t have an overhead view but he could tell the route was neither a straight line or a simple circle.  More of a baby Grand Prix than drag racing or NASCAR.  “If you crawl fast enough, it’ll prove you’re not really a newborn.”

“And if I don’t?”  He had to know the stakes. He just had to.

A wicked smile from Rhea gave Dominik chills. “Back in the carriage you go.”  

Dominik caught his breath.  Fuck.  This was going to suck.  What other choice did he have? Anything to get out of this ridiculous outfit.  Double or nothing it was.  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Rhea stood back up.  “Alright then, Dom Dom,” she taunted.  “On your mark. Get set!”

WHAP! The smack on his bottom didn’t hurt anything save his pride. “GO!”

Dominik surged forward towards the first cone.

“Go, go, go, go, go!”  The girls cheered.  “You can do it Dom Dom! “

Carmella rushed to the second cone and waved like a first base coach at Little League. “Come on, baby! Come on this way! You can do it!”

Dom pumped his legs so hard he almost galoped.  Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!  Boney knees did not feel good coming down hard on solid ground again and again.  At least in the ring he got knee pads.

He rounded the next cone and crawl-sprinted for Nikki.  The others were ‘helping’. 

“TWENTY-FIVE SECONDS!”  Rhea boomed.

Shit!  Remaining or elapsed? Remaining or elapsed?!  Dom decided it didn’t matter.  He dug the balls of his feet and the tips of his toes into the floor, trying to get more traction. He instantly regretted.  Any weight across the bottom of his feet was punished.  He yelped and yowled in pain, lost his footing and planted face first onto the floor.

“Oooof! Poor baby!”

“Maybe he’s not ready to be a crawler!”

The taunts spurred him on.  He crawled forward, ignoring the building ache in his limbs. If shuffling his legs instead of picking them up fully off the ground affected his speed he couldn’t tell.

“Under the table! Under the table,” Bailey hinted.  

Dominik took a sharp right turn (as sharp as he could, considering) and barreled underneath one of the tables.  Sure enough, the next orange cone was right there.  Where was the next one?

“FIFTEEN SECONDS!”

“Go, go, go, go!”  He realized he was back near the carriage.  Everyone was pointing back towards Rhea. Back towards the sex-swing thing. “Go, baby, go!”

“TEN. NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN. SIX.” 

Dominik his toes underneath him one last time.  He pushed through the pain and dove forared.  “FIVE. FOUR. THREE.” 

He landed with a flop and kept skidding, his exposed flesh rubbing and practically squeaking against the floor.

‘TWO!”

Cheers went up when the top of Dominik’s head brushed Rhea’s ankles.  He’d done it! He’d done it!  He’d done it!  His heart thudded and his lungs heaved.  That was so much harder than it should have been, but he’d done it!

Finally, it was over.

The cheers reduced to a smattering of applause. “Good job, Dom Dom!” Rhea praised. “You really are big enough to crawl!  Do you know what that means?”

Still huffing, puffing, and wincing, Dominik pushed himself back up to all fours and nodded. Yes. That meant he didn’t have to get back into that stupid carriage.  It meant this torture was going to end.  

Dues paid.  Back to normal.

“That’s right,” Rhea said. “Iiiiiit’s play time!”
*******************************************************************************************
Hope spot…

Two hours later and the ‘fun’ had yet to stop.

“Yee Haw!” the girls clapped, hooted and hollered.  

“Ride ‘em cowboy!”

“Get ‘em, Dom Dom!”

Now even Carmella and Dakota were calling him by that stupid nickname.

Dominik sat on an adult sized rocking horse, dressed like Woody from Toy Story, sans the pants.  A comically tiny cowboy hat strapped around his chin, one hand holding useless reins that didn’t go anywhere, the other one shaking a rattle.   

The ladies sat around him in a semicircle on chairs, munching on cake, sarcastically cheering him on like he was some kind of Chip N Dale’s dancer despite how utterly ridiculous he looked.  His diaper crinkled beneath him with every back and forth motion he made, reminding him about his status; recent memory a testament that it could always get worse.

Not much longer. Not much longer.  Couldn’t be.

“Yippee Kai Yay!”

He’d been good.  He’d been so good.  Had no other choice.  He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t run.  They’d let him take the mittens off, but his legs were still fundamentally useless.   No chance for escape.  The only option was for him to be the girls’ baby doll; to dress in silly costumes and to play silly games for their amusement.

They’d made him wear a custom bib while guessing baby food flavors. The words ‘BIG BABY DOM DOM’ were stitched on it.

They’d put a faux graduation cap and those drunk goggles on his head for a ‘story time’ in which he couldn’t read.

Besides dress up time and other things to ‘prove’ what an incapable baby he was, Rhea and the others had forced him to play with all sorts of baby toys:  He’d stacked blocks while on his knees, wearing a plastic hard hat.  They’d put conductor’s overalls on him and made him crawl around on all fours, pushing toy trains on a wooden track.  Every time he thought it was over, it just got a little bit worse.  Every outfit swap caused him to  hope against hope that Rhea would at least pause this torment.  It only escalated. 

  He didn’t try to escape.  Not once. No point. He had nowhere to go, and most of the time couldn’t have passed as anything other than a side-show comedy act. To add to his discomfort, his bladder was starting to rage again.  Rhea was very ‘good’ about keeping him hydrated.  Every play activity was punctuated with bottle feeding- gatorade, water, juice- to keep him well hydrated.

One might think that the feeling of a full bladder wouldn’t have bothered him after literally pissing himself earlier, but that just made it worse.  He’d done it once.  A little voice in the back of his brain assured him that he could do it again.  The hardest part about not thinking about something is that it’s impossible to consciously do.  In trying not to pee his pants a second time, his bladder became the near sole focus of his attention. And every obnoxiously loud crinkle with every micro movement sounded like the ticking of a clock.

It wouldn’t be long now.

One way or another the torment would be done. 

The joke had reached its natural limits.

Just a few more imaginary laps on the rocking horse.  It was the last toy he’d yet to play with as far as he could tell. Just a few more gliding galloping strides on a toy meant for literal babies and their fun would be done.  The rocking horse was the last monstrous yet infantile contraption left. Every other humiliation had been exhausted.

Almost.

A hand reached up took Dom by the wrist, rousing him from his trance. He looked down at Rhea, seeing what he swore was some kind of mercy in her eyes.  “Okay,” she said. “I think that’s enough.  You’ve been a very good baby.”  She held her arms open, signaling for him to fall into her.  He did, easy as pie.  “You’ve had enough playtime.”

The proceeding sigh was palpable.  So much cringing and wincing and muffled groans of torment.  Laying there in her arms, Dominik let every muscle in his body finally relax…

…until he was carted back to the sex swing.  Oh yeah.  He’d forgotten about that.  He was shifted over the rim of the flying saucer sex-swing. Another custom job, no doubt, but for the life of him Dominik still couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be.  The saucer section was bright green, with a thick cloth bucket seat in the center.  His bootied feet and bare legs were threaded through until he slipped right off of Rhea and was suspended inside it by heavy duty bungee cords.

Ow!

Ow!

Ow!

The contraption held his weight, but just barely.  If he wasn’t careful, he ended up putting too much force on the soles of his feet and it became lego city all over again. Damn. Not quite over.  He was so tired, so blown up, but he still couldn’t rest.

Bailey and Alexa ambushed him and reapplied the blunted mittens.  Whatever bit of awful awaited him wouldn’t require his hands. They took the cowboy vest and tiny hat with them.  The only things on his body were the diaper and mittens.

“There we go,” Rhea said, when they were done.  “Time to cool off. Baby Dom Dom is all safe in his bouncer!”

Dom’s eyes widened not with pain but recognition.  That’s what this contraption was!  He hadn’t thought such a thing could exist so it didn’t even occur to him.  But now that she’d called a spade a spade, Dom couldn’t think of it as anything else.  He was trapped in a giant bouncer.  This had to be the last bit. It just had to be!

“Ladies,” Rhea said.  “Dom Dom has had a lot of fun playing with his toys, but as you know, the most important and practical part of a baby shower is getting outfits for the little guy so that he’s not running around starkers all day.” She gestured to the all-but naked Dom as an example. That was meant with knowing laughter.

Too bad he wasn’t actually naked. Being naked sounded better than how he presently was.

“So go on,” Rhea said. “Show him his presents, Aunties.”

Two boxes, different in size but identically wrapped, were placed in front of him.  “Go on, Dom Dom.  Rip it up!”  

Dom tried, but the mittens locked to his wrists only let him pound at the flimsy cardboard beneath the wrapping paper.  Maybe he could wedge the box between his balled up fists and tear at the wrapping paper with his teeth…

“Here,” Becky said, snatching the first box away. “I’ll help.”  Having access to one’s

“What do you say, baby?”

Dominik sighed in frustration.  “Thank you, Aunt Becky.”

His frustration turned to confusion and momentary elation when he saw what was inside.  Crisp white sneakers with a powder blue stripe running down the side, the word ‘JORDAN’ etched out in white.

  “Someone’s got new shoooooes!”

Dominik was so excited, he peed a little without realizing it!  These were practically the exact opposite of what was on his feet at present.  Fantasy scenes of him playing basketball in the gym or just walking around from place to place showing off. Shoes like these were too good to do actual work in.  “Thank-!”  The wrapping paper from the second box came off before Dominik was able to express his sincere appreciation. “-you?”

The new Jordan Team Showcases went perfectly with the powder blue sailor suit and matching cap. “He’s gonna look so cute in these!”

Dominik’s excitement plummeted. Something that would have added to his sense of success and adulthood was being paired with to enhance appearing like an overgrown toddler (at best).  Adding peanut butter to a shit sandwich did not enhance the sandwich; it only ruined perfectly good peanut butter.

“What do you say, Dom Dom?”

A dejected sigh. “Thank you, Aunt Becky.”

Becky reached out and pinched the side of Dominik’s face so hard that it might as well have been a submission hold.  “You’re welcome Dom Dom!” she laughed.

And so the parade continued.  The Jordan 6 Retros paired wonderfully well with matching pin stripe shortalls-complete with snappies in the crotch, the chalk vector blue Reeboks paired with similarly red white and blue romper with a drop seat in the back of it, and so on and so forth.  The vintage Eddie Gurrero T-Shirt was an extra slap in the face.  Merch typically sold long and baggy, but this one had been hemmed so that it would stop at the very top of Domonik’s diapers.

Oh god…Dominik hadn’t thought of that.  They didn’t expect him to actually wear all this stuff, did they?

“Wussa-matta, Dom Dom?” Rhea warned him.  “Do you not like your presents?”

“Babies don’t care about clothes,” Bailey reminded them. “Little boys are all about their toys.”

“Is that it?” Alex asked. “Do you want to keep playing with your toys?”

“I think he does,” Rhea said. She slithered back up to him, trapped in the bouncer, and asked. “Are you ready to keep playing in just your booties and nappies?  Tired of clothes already?  Do you wanna keep playing in just your booties and nappies?  Or is my widdle guy getting sleepy? Is it nap time?”

Every person comes to a point where they reach the level of their patience. Dominik Mysterio had just reached his.  Low and slow, he growled.  “I’m. Not. A. Baby.”

“What was that, Dom Dom?”  Rhea asked, leaning in and putting her hand to her ear.  “I couldn’t quite hear you.  

“I’M NOT A BABY!”  

“Oooooooooooooooooo!”  The party suddenly transformed into a highschool confrontation.

Behind her placid expression, Rhea’s eyes were on fire. “Oh really? Mister-Crawls-Around- Everywhere.  You think you’re a big boy all of a sudden? Think you’re a man?”

“You’re making me crawl around!’ Dominik spat.  “It’s bullshit!”

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Rhea crossed her arms in front of her.  “Someone’s got a potty mouth. Too bad he can’t hold it in long enough to go to the potty.”

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The young man’s face heated up like his diaper had hours before. “That was an accident-”

“That is what they call them, yes.”

“I’d been drinking all night and you wouldn’t let me go before you put this thing on me!”

Rhea smirked. “That wasn’t the one I put on you. That’s the one Auntie Alexa put on you.”

“You know what I mean, you…you…” Dom stopped himself. “YOU!” Sulking, afraid, yet stubbornly prideful, Dom held his tongue but looked away.

“Alexa,” Rhea said without turning her head, “get the paddle.”

No reply from the peanuts gallery.

Five seconds later, Rhea was standing in front of a suspended Dom, a large wooden paddle in her hand, the kind famously seen in every fraternity hazing ritual put to film.

“Mister Potty Mouth,” Rhea said. “You’ve earned yourself ten swats.” She patted the paddle in the palm of her hand.  “If you’re as big as you say you are, you’ll take them like a man. No crying. No screaming. No fussing. No using your nappy.”

“If I prove you wrong, I get out?” Dominik asked. “This baby stuff stops?”

“Yup.  Full big boy status.”

“Adult,” Dominik corrected her. “Adult status.  No pull-ups. No making me sit on a potty chair. No cartoon underwear.  Nothing like that. This just stops.”

The onlookers exchanged concerned looks.  They weren’t ready for the fun to end just yet.

“Deal,” Rhea said.  “But if you mess up even once…I’m proven right and the fun continues.”

Dominik took a deep breath.  “Deal.”

The ring was removed from the bouncer rig.  No more toys. No more whimsy. No more pretense.  Several of the ladies helped each other to hoist and tighten the rigging.  Dominik was left dangling; a puppet on a string; a flesh pinata; a hanged man.

“Ten swings,” Rhea repeated. ”No crying. No screaming. No accidents.”

Dominik nodded.

WHACK!

The first swing came hard and fast, contacting Dominik without warning or waiting for him to brace.

“One!”

Dom didn’t so much as flinch.  

WHACK!

“Two!”

Rhea had made a grave miscalculation.  The bulk of the diaper was acting as a shield against the full force and sting of the paddle.  One humiliation device was countering another.  And the harness was wrapped around Dominik’s ass, adding a second layer of protection and making it so the diaper couldn’t be removed.

Rhea had played herself.

WHACK!

Dom winced and squinted in pain.  Rhea had realized her predicament and swung lower.  Dom’s bottom was protected.  His thighs not so much.

“THREE!”

WHACK!

“WOOOOOOOOOOO!” The gathered spectators cheered.

“FOUR!”

WHACK! WHACK!

Five and six rapidly followed.   Dominik gritted his teeth and held his breath.  FUCK! On top of his emotional and physical exhaustion, this was legitimately hurting.  He paused a second to exhale.  He wasn’t going to lose by groaning. He wasn’t going to give them any pretense that he’d cried or screamed liek a baby.

Then nothing.

Had he lost count?

Was it over!

WHACK!

“SEVEN!”

Rhea was just taking her time.  Letting the pain set in and the bruising start to take effect.  Damn but it hurt worse!  Dominik slammed his eyes shut, just in case tears threatened.

WHACK!

“EIGHT”

WHACK!

“NINE!”

Breathing shallow. Blood pumping.  Muscles braced. Only one more to go. One more swat and he was home fr-

“I know what my Dom Dom needs!” Rhea chirped.  From behind, she leaned in and whispered breathily into his ear. “He just needs….TIKI-TIKI-TIKI-TIKI-TIKI-TIKI-TIKI!”  Her fingers pressed into his stomach, jabbing into his ribs, poking and stabbing into his armpits. 

Dominik’s eyes lit up in surprise.“N-!” his voice caught in his throat. His poor aching bladder!  He hadn’t been paying attention to his bladder! He’d been so busy trying to regulate and tune out the outer pain, that the looming threat from in hadn’t occurred to him.

Just like a baby.

He’d been so emotionally overwhelmed and worn down that he’d let his guard down in other areas.  Combined with the tickling, his bladder was only too happy to open fire directly into his awaiting undergarments.

  Warmth exploded between his legs, piss splashing up against his privates and being quickly wicked away by thirsty pulp and cotton. The blood drained out of Dominik’s face while practically everything else flooded into his diaper.  The diaper expanded around him, subtly swelling like a sponge. The warmth dripped down from his front down between his legs while the river of pee made its way to his taint. Within seconds, the very bottom of his  cheeks were squishing in the formerly crisp and crinkling diaper.

“Dom?” Rhea asked, playfully.  “Dom Dom?  What’s wrong sweetie?  Did you forget how to laugh?”

Standing directly in front of Dominik, Nikki smirked.  “Nope,” she announced.”He just needs another change. He’s wet. Again.” 

“What?”

“Really?”

“Seriously?”

““Gosh!”

“Oh my, fu- hahahahaah!”

“Hahahahahahahahahaha!”

No amount of training or getting used to people making fun of him could have prepared Dominik for the reaction. A few giggled behind their hands, embarrassed for him and of him.  Others grinned and gushed like he’d done something adorable.  Rhea just nodded proudly and smirked, calm, but victorious.  Dom had no happy place he could retreat to.

“Awwww poor baby!” Rhea went on mockingly. as if a grown man pissing himself was perfectly.  “Looks like he couldn’t hold it in like a big boy after all.  He only had one more spanking to go!”

“NO!” Dominik erupted.  His throat rattled. His tears burst forth. “NO!” He flailed helplessly.  “That’s cheating! You cheated!”

Rhea walked around to look the tantruming man directly in the eye. “Never said it could only be swats,” she taunted.  “Did I?”

Cheating! Winning on a technicality! Such full and utter bullshit!  But there was little Dominik could do about it.  He’d been fooled again. He was the one sitting in a soaked pampers. He was the one crying like a spanked two year old.  “Mamiiiii!” he begged. “P-p-p-please!”

“Please what, Dom Dom?”

“Please change me!”

Rhea slipped two fingers past the leg cuffs of his diaper.  “You’re not that wet.” she said. “I think you can squish around in your nappy a little more without having to worry about a rash.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

She dug into the diaper bag and wiped her fingers.  “You’ve got so many gifts left, Dom Dom.  Don’t you want to see them?  Play with them a little? They’re alllll for you!”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!” Dominik was beyond words by this point. He slammed his mittened fists on the front of his thighs. Pounded his chest like King Kong. Thrashed and kicked his useless legs in the air, not even close to hitting anything.

All that frustration and embarrassment had bubbled over in him and he was finally acting the part he was dressed as: Sitting in a squishy wet diaper, pounding his fists and kicking his feet impotently, and crying.  Honestly, crying!  Tears and bawling and shouting. A full on meltdown.

“Alright,” Rhea said. “That’s enough of that.”  A pacifier was shoved into his mouth.  Dom lacked the presence of mind so completely that he didn’t think to spit it out before it was too late.  She grabbed the front ring on the pacifier and twisted it one-hundred and eight degrees.

A noticeable click. The hissing sound of a balloon filling up. The pacifier inflated so quickly that it threatened to choke him. His jaw was forced open as the bulb pressed up against the roof of his mouth and smashed his tongue back down.  He was gagged, powerless to remove the inflated balloon from out of his mouth, but all outward appearances, he might as well have been a tiny taught suckling on his favorite binky

“Mmmmm! Mmmmmm! Mmmmmmph!”

“Muuuuuch better,” Rhea said, tickling Dom under his chin.  “Now Dom,” she said. “If you’re a good boy and play nice, Mami will change you out of that icky wet diaper.  How does that sound?”

What else could Dom say? That is, what could he do?  He nodded and accepted his fate.
**************************************************************************************
Promo…

Rhea, Bailey, and Alexa all clinked shot glasses and tossed back the tequila. The real stuff this time, not the watered down placebo meant to trick suckers into unwinnable drinking contests.  

Tonight was not about planning and plotting, but about celebration! Mission accomplished. They’d put a little boy in his place and had more than enough photos to prove it should he ever need a reminder.

Shot glasses in one hand and phones in the other, the ladies flipped through all of the pictures they’d taken that day.

After his defeat and humiliation, they’d forced him to try on all of the outfits, one after the other, and paraded him up and down the line of applauding women pinching his cheeks and tickling at the back of his knees or giving tiny swats to his pillow pants bottom.  

“So handsome.”

“A real lady killer”

“So mature for his age.”

He hadn’t even been allowed to dress himself.  Bailey, or Alexa, or one of the others had made sure to strip him and dress him over half a dozen times before having him walk around again and get teased.  

Each time, there was a moment where he was left in nothing but the soaking, sagging diaper with the alphabet block font on it.  Each time, the only comfort he was given was another something to cover up the discolored crinkling mass and an assurance that he was an adorable baby boy who didn’t need to worry about such things.  

After the play clothes, came the dress clothes, culminating in Dom sitting in Rhea’s lap in front of a green screen for a mock family portrait.  They gave him nothing but a button up shirt, a clip on bow tie and a colorful rainbow beanie- propeller top included. Rhea obscured the sorry state of his underwear by wrapping her arm around his waist, and cupping his crotch with the palm of her hand. 

Dom had no clue as to what would eventually be digitally added to the green screen in post. Rhea hadn’t decided yet.  It might have been kind of funny to photoshop a wrestling ring, but she banished the thought.  Why mix work and play? She was more than just a wrestler.

“Well done, ladies,” Rhea said.  “Well done. Mission successful.”

“That was fun,” Bailey said. “Did you see the look on his face?  Paid him back so bad!”

Alexa giggled. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he enjoyed some of it.”

“More than some!”  Bailey guffawed.  “I think this was a treat for him as much as it was for us.”

“For all the money we sunk into it, it better be.” Alexa said.

“Yeah…”  Rhea said. “Rented a lot of stuff for this.”  Furniture. Toys. Props.  Stuff that wasn’t exactly easy or practical to transport.   Too bad it was over.

Alexa must have had some of the weird powers she sometimes pretended to have on camera.  “Hey, don’t get so down.  We’ve still got a day or two before the big show and getting back on the road.  The party isn’t over yet.”

“Gonna suck to have to give it all back, though.” Bailey sympathized.

“Not like we can give the shoes back,” Rhea grumbled.  “Or the clothes.  Or the nappies.”

“Yeah,” Alexa agreed. “Do you think he’s gonna use all those diapers in just a few days? I feel like we bought way too many.”  

That was true.  They’d bought enough to last a real baby a week or two, maybe longer. With as absorbent as they were, a single pack would have taken up most of a weekend with a couple to spare. 

A terrible twinkle came into Rhea’s eyes.  “Probably not.”  She poured herself another shot.  “Guess that means we won’t waste them.”

If her timing had been just a little more on, her companions would have sprayed burning mist in her face from laughing too hard.  “Rhea, no!”

“No, Rhea!”

Their giddy grins said they were thinking the opposite of what they were saying.  

“I’m not saying he’s going to have to wear them on camera,” Rhea mused. “But how many minutes do we have on T.V. a week anyways?”

“And he was very well behaved with that special paci…”  Bailey added.

Alexa tacked on, “And he did look awfully cute in some of those clothes….”

Rhea finished the thought.  “Maybe we should just see where this goes. To Mami-hood?”

All of three of them could drink to that.  So they did.

“TO MAMI-HOOD!”

**********************************************************************************
Finish…

Dominik laid wide awake in his crib, listening to the baby monitor.  He was keenly aware of everything the girls were saying about today, and about him specifically.  Accidentally or not, they’d switched the end with the microphone up, letting him suffer in silence while they congratulated themselves, mocked, and made plans for him.

He shut his eyes, and rolled over, slamming a pillow on his head. The gentle hiss still filled his ears as his bladder finally relaxed and filled his diaper back up.  At least he could go to sleep with an empty bladder.

“Let me go check on him,” the monitor broadcast Rhea’s words.

Dominik rolled over, pretending to be asleep.  He heard the door open. “Come on Dom-Dom,” she coaxed. “Let’s get you changed.”

“Mmmmph?”   Dominik mumbled from behind the pacifier.  He rolled over and saw the cutesy cage he was in being opened up.

“I’m not gonna let you go to sleep in a wet nappy. That wouldn’t be proper, would it?”  She opened her arms, and he obediently crawled into them, supporting himself so he was easier to carry.

Rhea let out a low groan, more out of tiredness than pain. Dominik was still a fully grown twenty six year old man, but Rhea was well…Rhea.   It was the kind of tired grunt his mother used to make when carting around his little sister; back when she was old enough to walk but still liked being carried.  He half expected Rhea to say ‘You’re getting heavy!’

 She transported him back over to the changing table.  He didn’t struggle while she secured him to the changing table.  He wasn’t getting out of this house.  At least he could get out of this diaper.  So much for dignity.

Rhea quietly ripped the tapes off his diaper and started to cleanse him without comment.  There was something oddly nice about that.  In another circumstance could be almost sensual instead of mortifying.

“This will feel so much better,” Rhea commented. “Babies love having their nappies changed, don’t they?”

Dominik tried nothing, not even mumbling through the gag they’d left in.

“Legs up,” Rhea commanded.   Dominik did so without thinking.  He grimaced behind his pacifier as the wipes made their way to his buttocks and between his cheeks.  “Front to back, you got soaked Dom Dom! Someone was about to leak!”  It almost sounded like a compliment.

Almost.

Something resembling relief lit up in Dominik when the fresh diaper was unfolded and slipped underneath him.  “Legs down.”  His impatience only grew with the sprinkling of baby powder all over his groin.  He’d hate to admit it, but it did feel good.

Finally (finally), the new diaper was pulled up and secured snugly around his waist.  Rhea patted the front of the diaper lightly.  “There we go. All done.”  She reached forward and grabbed Dom’s pacifier and gave it a click.  

“Thank God,” Dominik whispered to himself when the balloon deflated and his mouth was finally free of the torturous device.  For a while he’d almost started thinking of himself as a cuter version of that one guy from Pulp-Fiction.  Just with less leather and more plastic. (Where’d he go to the bathroom, anyway?)

“I’m so proud of you,” Rhea teased. “Such a good baby!” Dom was too tired to think anything of it. 

What did catch his attention was when she boosted herself up onto the changing table, and readjusted Dominik so his head was in her lap.  “So…” she said, pushing her shirt up to just below her breasts. “...I think you’ve earned yourself a little reward, don’t you?”

Dominik’s heart started beating faster.  His mouth began to water.  The inside of his fresh diaper felt just a little bit tighter.  Was this really happening?  Maybe it was! She’d gone full tilt in pretty much every other aspect of this charade.  Why not breastfeeding?

“Yes…”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes…Mami?”

“Good baby!”

He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, puckered his lips, and latched onto the rubber nipple of yet another massive baby bottle.  Full of milk. Squirting down his throat.

 “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you?” Rhea asked, winking maliciously.

For a second? Yeah, he really did.

(The End)
 

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

21 minutes ago, Hollis Fox said:

This is a non-sequitur question unrelated to the recent chapters, but will the reader ever learn exactly what happened to Chaz and Amy to impair their balance enough to the extent that they can’t walk?

Yeah. I thought that was answered already.  The jingly bell rattles that cause giddiness, loss of bladder control and unbalance.  Too much and it destroys your inner ear.  

[Official "Looking for a Story..." Thread]

35 minutes ago, Dappy said:

Thank you, it was indeed 'The wannabe hypnotist'. Some people are just a fount of ABDL knowledge. 😊

 

The author is a friend of mine, and that might be my all-around favorite work of his because it was such a unique take on hypnosis and such. Made it really stand out to me.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

3 hours ago, Samriis said:

Good christ... I knew something like had to come sometime but it still hits hard... no pun intended. 

It hit me hard too.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

15 hours ago, Kat5 said:

Oh my ...! I just... 

WOW.

I mean, Clark is in trouble, but the only thing that's even remotely going to lessen that trouble is the fact that he's probably about to be in a hospital and with people recording her trying to beat him to death, and then hitting Tracy, they may not want to kick him out and deal with the the news spectacle that's already coming. 

So they shouldered him out to get in an abusive Amazon with a lack of self control. And oh boy I have no idea how Clark is going to recover from this Physically. 

I don't know if they -can- expel him after her reaction. I also don't know if they can -avoid- expelling him.

I have the distinct feeling that the big police are about to be involved, and then LPS. 

I'm so shell shocked that I'm rambling!

 

Excellent work!

Edit after a few moments of clarity: Tracy is nothing at all short of a hero no matter the perspective. Amazon? She protected a little from being beaten to death. News? Oh absolutely gonna have a field day. Littles? She saved a little. Police? She was attacked saving a life.

Tracey needs a metal and a fat payout from the school for preventing a staff member from committing murder.

This is by far my favorite Tracy scene.  When I was plotting out her arc, I was originally planning to just leave her at the point where she slapped Clark in the face because of the awkward situation and emotional manipulation etc. etc.  Kind of show the Tweener perspective, but it felt...flat.

Then I thought of the going to discreetly get Zoge to run interference in the "Ambrose changes Clark" scene.

But even then that felt not good enough.

Then I realized what Clark would eventually do to Ambrose, and what Ambrose would do to Clark.  And then I realized that this had to happen too.  

Tracy is in an awkward position as a Tweener, socially, but she wouldn't let someone she actually cared about get abused in such a way.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

16 hours ago, FloridaKid said:

‘Bout damn time somebody lit into Ambrose. Certainly glad Tracy and her husband showed up. Clark is definitely in for it, though. This is such a great story and you’ve got me emotionally invested in the characters. Wonderful writing. Thanks again for sharing it here.

Thank you for telling me this. Sometimes I worry that I'm tooting my own horn playing with my imaginary friends. It's good to know they're other people's imaginary friends, too.

NGL, I teared up writing "I've got you boss".

[Official "Looking for a Story..." Thread]

On 1/11/2024 at 10:13 AM, Dappy said:

Any one remembers the name of a story where the older sister uses hypnosis to regress her younger sister to act younger and bedwet this goes on for a while.Afterwards during a doctor's visit the mom finds out and forces the girl to live as the baby.

I remember the story having a strong southern tones. And that it's relatively old.

The Wanna Be Hypnotist by @WBDaddy  I think it's also called "Don't Meddle With Forces You Don't Understand". 

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

Chapter 109: Setting Limits

First thing Monday morning, my head was back on its swivel.  Left, right, up, forward, behind. The only direction I neglected looking was down. Stupidly, I imagined my neck stretching with use making me taller. It was a silly thought, but the absurdity of it kept my otherwise negative emotions in check. 

What was really stupid, truly idiotic, was that every time I was ready to give up, I swore I saw something just on the periphery of my vision that made my head turn and I’d do the whole dance all over again.

“What are you looking for?” Mandy asked, sounding suspicious. A bad luck of the draw had put us side by side in line.  Calling the former athletic tomboy an enemy would be an extreme exaggeration; but we were neither of each other’s favorite people.

“Nothing…” I lied.  Is it a lie when everyone knows it? Or is it just politics? 

“He’s probably just peeing and hoping nobody notices,” Billy joked in front of me. 

“Shut up, Billy.”  I said robotically. “I’m not peeing right now.”  I’d already done that once before school and again after breakfast.  Total wet and forget scenario. Would have stayed forgotten until Beouf or Zoge plopped me down on the changing table, too.  

It’s not that I was numb between my legs or had zero bladder control; it’s just that who in their right mind kept a constant tally on how many times they peed and pooped? Barring health issues and pain, most people forgot within a minute of washing their hands.  For me there was no flush or handwashing, so I was starting to allow myself to forget as soon as my bladder stopped aching.  If I didn’t have more important things to worry about that fact might have made me start to worry about myself. 

“You’re wet, though,” Billy laughed over his shoulder. 

Anyone with more than a day of dealing with toddlers would recognize that I was already wet.  I’d been wet before Zoge took Ivy and I out to the bus loop and added to it during breakfast. The light blue and green striped romper Janet had dressed me in was especially snug between the legs. The pulp had done its job of absorbing everything I’d put into it and had had enough time to swell up. 

Still, my diaper was nowhere close to leaking and the snaps that ran up between my legs were holding firm.  I was going to get changed at Circle Time, but only because it would be inconvenient to have to change me any other time prior to Lunch.

What Billy was really looking for that Monday was a fight. Distractedly, I added to the banter and kept looking.  “Pot? Did you just call your dear friend Kettle black?”  We were about to go into the breezeway and then round the corner into the classroom but maybe I could see if a familiar car had pulled into the front parking lot.

“Huh?” Billy said.  “Pot?”

Mandy rolled her eyes. “He’s saying you’re wet too.”  She called back over her shoulder to Annie.  “Your boyfriend is an idiot.”

“I know,” Annie said. My eyes were elsewhere but I could hear the condescending smile. “He makes me laugh.”

“Billy,” I heard Zoge call from Chaz’s stroller. “Eyes forward. Look where you’re going, my love.”  Billy took the hint.  “Clark, you too.”

I stilled my head but my eyes kept going, straining to see in the direction of my ears. Damnit!  Nothing!  We were back in the breezeway, a brick wall to either side.  A left turn would take us to Beouf’s room, but maybe I could jerk my head right and get one last peek in the parking lot.

A tap on the shoulder brought me back.  “Are you doing that thing, again?” Mandy asked. “Still worried what the big kids think of you?”

I frowned at the absurdity.  “What? No?”  We’d left Breakfast so late that beyond a tardy car rider, there weren’t any actual students around to bear witness to my humiliation.  

“Good.” Mandy said. “You don’t look that babyish.”   Easy for her to say. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen her dressed with anything needing snaps.  Other than her diaper, Mandy tended to be dressed in clothes that my students might wear. A three or four year old’s wardrobe of shorts that weren’t quite baggy enough and skirts that weren’t quite long enough was a major upgrade from onesies, shortalls, rompers, or just the t-shirt and diaper combo.

Rather than argue with her or vent or point out how she was referring to people a fraction of her age as ‘big kids’, I let it go and said “Thanks.”

“What are you looking around for?”  She asked as soon as we turned the corner.

From behind, Ivy answered for me. “Miss Tracy’s not here today. Clark misses her.”

I didn’t reply. There was no denying it. She hadn’t been at the bus loop. She hadn’t shuffled in late to the cafeteria to help with the kids at breakfast.  I didn’t see any sign of her car.  The only consolation I had was that Ambrose looked incredibly peeved, so Tracy’s absence probably wasn’t part of her plan.

Brollish maybe…?  No! Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it!

Tracy was just gone.  She didn’t show up today.  Called in sick. Took a personal day.  Or she just quit; got tired of Ambrose and Brollish’s bullshit and ran off with her man mountain of husband to start a new life.

“Whoah!” Mandy said, snapping me out of my head. We were in Beouf’s room and the Amazon duo was unhooking us from the line harnesses. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah,” I rasped.  “I’m fine.” I was in no mood to fend off Billy or any of my other jackals. 

Her voice pitched down low and quiet.  “You sure? You just looked like you were about to…”

“Thanks. I’m good.  Just…exhausted.”  Exhausted was a good word for how I was feeling. A fine word. An adult word.  One that was harder to pounce on than ‘tired’ or ‘cranky’.

We waddled over to the front of the classroom and took our positions on the carpet.  “I get it.”

I stirred and looked gloomily at Mandy. Shauna was on her right, but there was another open spot on Shauna’s other side.  She didn’t need to be sitting by me.  “Get what?”

“I get it,” she repeated. “You’re worried about your friend. That sucks.”

“Yeah it does.”  I kept breathing and looking down at the massive pulpy bulk squishing beneath me just so that my throat. 

Billy had gotten unhooked from the line first, but was still prowling around the semi-circle like a tiger in its cage looking for the perfect spot to sit. When Annie walked behind us and took the seat to Shauna’s right, leaving no room for her beau, Billy stopped and looked downright offended.

Ivy plopped down on my left, wearing a soft pink dress with her legs covered up in thin white tights.  It was just short of Picture Day fancy, and depending on how hot it got as the morning went on, she’d probably lose the tights by the time we got to the playground.  

Was that why Zoge tended to dress her daughter up so much? Were ornate and flashy baby dresses the closest thing she could fathom to letting Ivy grow up?  Did that extra touch somehow make her feel better that her grown flesh and blood never got a real opportunity at life? Did she sleep better at night because at least her daughter was wearing top shelf baby gear instead of running around naked in just her diaper?

That was giving Hana Zoge too much credit, I decided. I felt I understood her reasons for the awful things she’d done, but that didn’t mean she’d earned any kind of benefit of the doubt yet.

Beouf high stepped over us and sat down cross legged at the head.  “Billy, sit down,” she instructed. “We’re ready to begin.”  In perfect choreographed harmony, we all heard the first tape on Chaz’s diaper rip from the bathroom

“AH! COLD! COLD! COLD!”  Zoge’s gentle laughing and cooing were less distinct from where I sat.

Grudgingly, my most aggressive bully boy sat down next to Ivy and shot me a look of acknowledgement if not respect. That’s just how people like Billy were. I still had enough credibility in his mind where his antics were more friendly competition than any attempt to assert dominance.

I leaned forward just enough to look past Ivy and returned the nod. Then she did the unthinkable.

“I’m gonna miss Miss Tracy, too.”  I stopped breathing. The full weight of that sentence was crushing my chest and I wanted to scream out in pain from it.

Tracy. Gone. Forever.  The last time I’d seen her was a fucking grocery store by accident and she wasn’t even in Oakshire anymore! And it was so obvious that even Ivy, a girl born and raised in a fantasy world, was emotionally aware enough that she could see the writing on the wall that I was refusing to read. Wasn’t that so like my life?!

Too real! Too fucking real!

Oblivious to my emotional state, or maybe not, the Little Yamatoan scooted sideways, leaned over, draped her arm across my shoulders, and pulled me in for the lightest, most gentle hug. I let her. What’s more, I hugged her back.  “Thanks,” I whispered.

“Welcome,” she whispered back.

“EWWW! GROSS!  IVY’S VIOLATING CLARK’S CONSENT AGAIN!”

It all happened so fast that Beouf hadn’t gotten out the first syllable of one of her Yamatoan nursery rhymes.  Ivy jerked up and away from me like she’d been caught doing something wrong.  “Sorry!” she said. “Sorry!  Sorry! I didn’t mean to!”  

She started shuffling back, trying to separate herself from me.  Just the accusation of her doing something wrong was making her shake.

“SHE WAS TRYING TO SUCK ON HIM!” Billy shouted. “LIKE A VAMPIRE!  I SAW TEETH! TEETH I TELL YOU!”

Zoge rushed out of the bathroom, carrying Chaz. “Ivy?!”

Chaz was blushing like a beet.  “Mrs. Zoge!” He yelled. “You forgot to button me up!”

“Mommy!”  Ivy shouted. “I didn’t!  I didn’t mean to!”

“BILLY!” I snapped. “WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?!” 

Billy was trying his best not to laugh at his own cruelty. “What?! I was saving your life.  Ivy was trying to give you a hickey or something.  She was about to mount you, I swear! That’s how it looked!”

Ivy was shaking her head like she’d been accused of murder.  The first few words coming out of her mouth were “No,” but after that it melted into what might have been a combination of Yamatoan and wordless blubbering. 

Chaz was set down so Ivy could be picked up, and soothed; her back rubbed and her bottom patted. No longer caring that his romper wasn’t buttoned up, Chaz wasted no time taking Ivy’s spot and reached out to both Billy and myself for celebratory high five. He got one from Billy.

Oh, Ivy! That poor woman! Every time she did something even remotely ‘adult’, it became a scene. She’d been conditioned to the point where even the baseless accusation of impropriety reduced her to tears. Coming from Billy, the accusation had even less credibility.

I boomed, “SHE GAVE ME A FUCKING SIDE HUG, YOU ASSHOLE!  I WAS FEELING BAD AND SHE WAS TRYING TO BE NICE!”

Mandy and the half of the class that normally hated my guts were nodding along.  “It’s true, Mrs. B.  Ivy was being good!”  Half a second later she remembered to say, “So was Clark.”

“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?” Billy said, seeming far more entertained than outraged.

I don’t know when I climbed to my feet and stared down at Billy.  I just was. “Try minding your own business just once.”  I’d woken up with a short fuse already.  It was dwindling down. I was done yelling. Soon, a tiny voice in the back of my brain promised, I’d be done talking.

Slowly, deliberately, Billy stood up to meet me. Shoulders back, head up, and chest bowed out.  He was taller than me, younger, and in better shape.  The anger and frustration I was feeling on so many levels didn’t give a damn.  I’d never been in a real fight before.  First time for everything.

Beouf did not stand up, but there was a quiet, intimidating aura that was rapidly expanding from around her.   “Billy. Clark. You’re both about to make a bad choice. Do you want to make a bad choice?”

We ignored her.

“Ivy’s off limits,” I growled.  My fists and everything below my waist was clenched, cheeks included. 

“Yeah?” Billy said.

“Yeah,” I mouthed.

“Why’s that?”  He wasn’t blinking.

I was trembling. Given half a day to play with my words I could have told Ivy’s story in a compact enough way to make him understand that she’d had it harder than most.  Given fifteen minutes I could at least bullshit some excuse so that he’d think leaving her alone was his idea.  

I didn’t want that kind of time.  “Doesn’t matter,” I heard myself rasp.  “Ivy’s. Off. Limits.”

Billy’s eyes left me, feeling pressure from the other members of our clique.   Zoge and Beouf were looking at each other. Everyone else, I felt, was staring at me. “Or else, what?”

“Nope,” Beouf said, snatching me up.  I was on her hip and dizzy from the near whiplash.  “Nuh-uh.  Not doing this.  Not today. Not ever. Nope, nope, nope.” She started carrying me to the bathroom.  “Billy. Time-out. Clark! Diaper change, then time-out!  Mrs. Zoge, take over!”

Billy instantly reverted to being a kid who got his hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar.  “What’d I do?”

“You know what you were doing,” she said, her body radiating anger and heat.

“No,” Billy lied. “I was just trying to help! Honest!”

I was at ground zero watching Melony’s eyes widen and her jaw go drill sergeant stiff.  “Then,” she said evenly. “It seems I need to remediate you on the difference between helping, tattling, and provoking others.  We’ll do it during your playground time.” 

“What? NO!”

The rest of Billy’s protests were drowned out by the closing of the bathroom door.  I was down on the changing table, and staring up into Melony’s eyes instead of my own ridiculous reflection while she popped open the snaps on my romper.

“This isn’t what I meant when I was talking about looking out for Ivy.”

“He started it!” I whined.  I slapped the palm of my hand over my mouth. Wow, that sounded dumb. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“Ignore him,” she said, gathering up the usual changing supplies. “Don’t let him bait you.”

“Oh, come-” She threw me a warning look and opened up my diaper.  I lowered my voice. “How often does that work in the real world?”  I sucked in my breath and bit my tongue while the cold wipes passed over me.

“It’s still against school rules,” Beouf said, crossing my ankles and lifting my legs.  “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’d get in if you actually got into a fight?  Students being dangerous to other students is one of the few ways you could get expelled.”

I crossed my arms and tried to forget the fact that a new diaper was being placed under me mid argument.  “I know the student code of conduct,” I groused. “Wouldn’t Billy get expelled too?”

“Who cares about Billy?” Melony asked. “I’m worried about you!”

I locked eyes again and caught her blushing.  The caught a glimpse of myself giving the biggest dumbest grin up at her. “Really?”

“What?” she asked, pretending to be very focused on getting the tapes on my fresh Monkeez just right. “You’re gonna tell me you didn’t have favorites when you were a teacher?”

“Not the point,” I said.

“Agreed,” she said.  “I’m very proud of you for trying to do the right thing, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.”

She was technically correct and I hated it.  “What am I supposed to do?”

“You work on just being nice to Ivy. I’ll take care of Billy.  Just promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid or crazy for the rest of the day.”

I huffed. “Fine. I promise.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was a promise I wasn’t going to come close to keeping.

Chapter 110: Crashing Down

Time slowed down as I felt the thin bones and cartilage pop beneath my knuckles as my wild swing connected with its target.  All around me screams of shock and panic rang out through the air. Heavy running footsteps thundered on the ground too late and the tiniest flecks of blood splattered onto my wrist.  

If I were a better liar, I’d tell you how I felt a terrible happiness, or a sense of numb peace knowing I’d sealed my fate on my own terms, or some other self-justifying bullshit. There was none of that in the then and there; only the unchecked rage of a full blown tantrum; the cathartic release of a pressure that had been building and building for weeks on end until it finally popped like a cork from a bottle of sparkling wine.

I had my reasons of course. I had plenty of them.  But for those few glorious moments between the reason that preceded it and the terror that followed, I had only raw red righteous anger pumping through my veins.  No future. No past. No regrets. No fears. No anticipation. No pain.  No tears. Just red.

All of that would come later and very very soon after the popping and crunching, but in that moment, I had no such thing weighing me down or rippling out from that moment.  Such reflections would only come in the micro-seconds after my fist was reeling back for a second swing.

*************************************************************************************************
“Do you wanna play dollies, or racecars?” Ivy asked me at the independent play center. 

“Neither,” I said. 

We were both on our knees on the carpet next to Beouf’s kidney table, restlessly rifling through the toy selection while being careful not to make too much of a mess.  We’d have to clean up anything we spilled once centers rotated again and couldn’t make so much noise that it would disturb anyone not specifically paying attention to us.

“What about both?” Ivy offered. “The dollies are too big to ride in the cars, but we could have them sit on top of the roofs or something.

“So you want to pretend that the dollies are Amazons and the cars belong to Littles?”  

“Yeah!” Ivy smiled, then frowned. “I mean, no! Little cars are not toys.”  She didn’t fully believe what she was saying, but she was trying to be polite.  The stroller Janet pushed me around in was bigger than the scooter I used to take to work.

“No thanks, Ivy.”  I said.  “Good effort, though.”  Ivy looked briefly crestfallen but busied herself playing with a dollhouse.

My eyes scanned the toy shelf, and I felt a sour taste settle in the back of my mouth.  The play center was probably my least favorite of the morning activity rotations. Being right next to Beouf’s kidney table, it didn’t have the privacy of the reading nook, and it lacked the direction and pretense of the puzzle table or the attention of either Amazon. The options were to select a toy to entertain yourself for a few minutes, and thus take ownership of that playtime, or to sit and sulk.

Boredom could be a powerful motivator. I’d spent more time than I cared to recognize sitting there every day and fiddling with plastic stacking rings, or playing chicken with a jack-in-the-box set to pop before the weasel, just so I could have something to do. lBeouf and Zoge were masterful at creating scenarios where giving in and accepting perpetual infancy felt like common sense, but at the end of the day sometimes all that was really needed were toys and time.  Trap someone in diapers for long enough and they’ll wet their pants.  Give someone nothing to do but fiddle with useless pieces of plastic, and they’ll play.  

I wasn’t even an hour removed from my confrontation with Billy, so I was still stewing in it and quietly imagining scenarios where I knocked his block off.  The sense of injustice for Ivy that I’d been feeling was only compounded by my own personal outrage that my hard one authority was being challenged again; publicly this time.  

It’s not like either of us were in an environment where we could work out and build muscle, but genetics and youth were kinder to Billy. He was a more natural athlete than me and I wouldn’t want to arm wrestler or race him.  He was no Bert Braun though; and lacked the grit that years of manual labor had built on top of my father-in-law’s frame.  That and he was cockier, besides.

I popped my pacifier in my mouth and sucked on it, drawing comfort from the fantasy at punching the kid in the throat. All the padding that his diaper provided wouldn’t protect him from a swift kick in the balls; and he did love to spread his legs. I frowned and immediately spat the pacifier out, the rubber tasting of cognitive dissonance. 

Beating Billy’s ass, even if it were probable, would only get me suspended or worse.  Fighting, being a clear and present danger to other students, was an easy way to get expelled.  Getting expelled for violence wouldn’t just banish me from one of the few familiar places I had left to me;  it’d guarantee me a ticket to New Beginnings.  I couldn’t imagine a daycare would want to accept me unless I’d been properly ‘rehabilitated’.

Ivy’s looked back from her doll house, her eyes starting to get red puffy again.  “Did I do something wrong?” she whispered. “I’m sorry I hugged you.”  What happened at Circle Time was still eating at her, too. It was strange, but that made me feel better about my decision to stand up for her.  Ivy wasn’t nearly as mindfucked as I’d let myself believe.  Not everything rolled off her back so easily.

I gently shook my head and tried to replicate my best adult-talking-to-a-crying-kid voice.  “Nuh-uh,” I whispered. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”  I quickly added, “Next time, maybe ask, but I’m not mad.  I would have said ‘yes’.”

The Little Yamatoan spread her arms wide. “Can I have one now?”

Goodness help me….  “Sure.” 

On our knees, on the carpet, Ivy and I shuffled forward and wrapped our arms gently around each other.  “Thank you,” Ivy said.

“Awwwwwww!” 

I let go of Ivy and backed away like I’d been caught doing something indecent. Over at the puzzle table, Mandy and Shauna were cradling their faces in their hands, and gushing like they’d seen a puppy and a bunny rabbit making friends.  Right next to us at the kidney table,  Tommy and Jesse were snickering behind their hands right next to us. 

“Keep working, everyone,” Beouf said.  “You should only be worried about what is going on at your center.”

Annie and Sandra Lynn were similarly redirected with a gentle tapping on Zoge’s desk.  I only caught a flash of the former’s worried frown and the latter’s silly grin before I was treated to the back of their heads once more.  Over by the reading nook, two beanbags jiggled as Chaz and Billy buried themselves and yucked it up.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked, face starting to boil.  “Remember that story you told me this weekend? Why haven’t you told anybody else about it?”

Ivy sat back on her heels and seemed to consider it. “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to, or not allowed to?”  I asked.  

“Don’t want to.”

My hand reached sideways out of habit and I grabbed a large toy dump truck off the bottom row.  I tilted the dump body up and down, trying to pour some of the anxious, angry energy I was feeling into the yellow mound of metal and rubber.  “Why not?”

 “That would make me different,” she said. “More different,” she corrected herself. “I’m a baby, but not Adopted.” She leaned over and put a doll inside the truck’s dump bin, setting it with its arms draped over the side like it was lounging. “My Mommy is the same Mommy I’ve always had.” She leaned back and sat down on her bottom, spreading her legs.  Even though she was still wearing those white tights, she fluffed out her dress to cover up as much of the diaper bulge as possible without stretching the material.. “She taught me right.”

So much to unpack there, but I let the comment go out of pity. “They might be nicer to you, if they knew,” I told her.  I gently rolled the truck to her and she stopped it.  She waited for me to mirror her so she could roll it back.  We had made a kind of pen using our legs.

“I don’t think so,” she replied, softly. “People don’t like things that are different.”

I caught the rolling dump truck as she passed it and turned it around. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.” There was no hesitation there.  “I was different when people thought I was a big girl and went to big girl school and my friends were mean to me. Then I went back to daycare and I stopped being different.”

More than likely, I realized, that was probably because the doomed Littles in Yamatoa were either so mind fucked that they didn’t know how to be mean to her, or they had the common decency to take pity on someone who was an actual child. By the time she left the country, she’d gone through puberty, and had long been a fixture with any and all of the adult Littles already trapped there.

I rolled the truck back while trying to find a way to counter her without it becoming a circular argument.  “Have you tried telling other Littles before?”

“Yes,” she said simply.  She pushed it back without turning it around.

I pushed the truck back. It went so fast and so sudden that the doll fell over. “Alright, what happened?”

Ivy took a moment to prop the doll back up.  “Some were nice. Lots were mean. Much opportunity for hardship.  All went away when they learned they were really babies like me.” Much more gently, she rolled the toy back over to me.

“Why did you tell me, then?” I asked.

“You’re different, too.”

That felt like an accidental insult. “No. I’m not.”

“You used to be a Grown-Up,” Ivy said softly, a hint of awe creeping into her tone.

I remembered the truck and kept rolling it. Using just my index finger I circled the room. “So did they,” I said.

“How do you know?” Ivy held the truck. “Did you see them be Grown-Ups?”

“No.”

“Have they told you about them being Grown-Ups?”

“N…” I stopped. “A little bit, yeah.”  That was a weird question.  Come to think of it, we didn’t talk so much about who we were before we had our lives ripped away from us.  Snippets here and there when we were feeling really sorry for ourselves, but that was about it. “Why is that?” I wondered aloud.

The Yamatoan had a strangely profound answer.  “It does not feel natural to talk about who we used to be.” A bit of her mother’s accent and patter snuck into her speech. “The frog often does not think to tell its tadpoles that it too was a tadpole.”

“You’re losing me, Ivy.”

She passed the toy truck back.  “I knew you when you were a Grown-Up. Everybody did. That makes you different, too. That’s why I told you.”

At least she didn’t mention something about me sticking around forever. “What if I told everybody?” I offered. “Tell them the story you told me?”

Ivy’s entire body stiffened.  “Please don’t.”

Wow. That had come out wrong. I held up my palms trying to make myself look less threatening.  “Not what I meant. I mean, maybe there’s a way I could tell them for you so that they wouldn’t be so mean.  So that they would…”  I bit my lip and reached up so I could at least squeeze my pacifier like it was Lion. There really wasn’t a good way of saying I wanted to spread the pity around.  I settled on, “I’m a teacher. I’m good at explaining things.”

“No.” Ivy said, shaking her head. “Please no.”

“Why not?”

“Do you need a reason to not want a hug?”

I sucked on my teeth and let the pacifier dangle again.  “Point taken.”

Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye.  Across from the play center, on the other side of the room, was the reading nook. It was completely barricaded off from Zoge’s sight, and Beouf would have to consciously lean over in her seat to see what went on there.  It’s why it was most Littles favorite place to poop if they could get the timing right.  Semi-privacy and only sharing your humiliation with one other equally as doomed person.

Billy and Chaz had unburied themselves from the beanbag chairs and had taken up a new pastime.  They were on their knees hugging each other.  That’s the excuse they would have gone with, anyhow.  
I could already hear Billy’s indignant voice in my head:  “What? We were just hugging! Gibson and Ivy can hug but I can’t hug a friend?”  Before we met, Billy already knew how to push buttons and play dumber than he really was.

He and Chaz weren’t just hugging, however.  The way they rubbed their hands over one another’s backs and pressed their faces together, cheek to cheek, gave off more sensual undertones.  Looking right at me, they puckered their lips like dying fish, and blew kisses at me.

Clark and Ivy sitting in a tree…

Caught between our two stations, Mandy and Shauna looked side to side to gauge the boys’ pantomime and Ivy and my reaction.  Ivy didn’t seem to notice. My face must have been something priceless, because as soon as they spied me, they used their pacifiers to muffle their giggles.

My hand tightened to fist.  I was gonna knock Billy’s block off. March right up to him and punch him in the nose.

As soon as I stood up a familiar hand reached up and clamped onto my wrist, immobilizing me.  Even if I pulled as hard as I could, there was no way I was going to escape Ivy’s grasp.

“Ivy…” I leaned in and whispered. “Let go.”  For my discretion I heard tiny popping sounds travel across the classroom and straight into my ears.  

K-I-S-S-I-N-G…  

“No,” Ivy said. “Don’t be bad. Don’t be naughty.”

First Ivy…first then Billy.  Even with all her recessive strength, Ivy would be caught off guard if I punched her in the face.  Everybody had a plan until they got hit hard enough.  I wouldn’t knock out any teeth, but I could shock and stun her enough to…what was I thinking?

There was another play here that I wasn’t seeing, something to keep Billy off my back and give me time.  I sat back down, but Ivy didn’t let go of my hand.  

True to form, my disciples changed their positions and held hands in mock reflection of us.  Their eyelids batting and continuing to mime making out with each other with their tongues flapping out of their mouths disgustingly.  Billy reached out and groped Chaz on the chest.  Chaz threw back his head in fake ecstasy. 

“Billy! Chaz!” Beouf called from her kidney table.  “This is your one chance before I call your parents!”

“But we weren’t doing anything!’ Billy lied, poorly.
“I don’t want to hear it, young man.”

“You can’t even see what we’re doing!”

Beoufs head motioned to me and then the girls muffling themselves with rubber dummies. “I don’t need to. I can see what everyone else is doing.”  She looked over the top of me and straight towards Ivy. Her eyes doubled back on her hand over my wrist. “Good girl, Ivy.  Let him go.”  

Evidently, no one was nearly as quiet as they suspected.

Billy and Chaz finished out that particular center rotation glaring at me over the top of large hardback children’s books. Their gaze was unblinking and unforgiving, as if I’d been the one to tattle on them and break some kind of code.  I’d only wanted to break Billy’s stupid face; maybe boot Chaz in the ribs or something.  

When the timer went off and we were supposed to go pull the latest symbol off of our visual schedule, my two disciples were slow approaching. Tommy crawled alongside Chaz, the pair looking like a couple of dire wolves on the prowl.  

FLICK! 

A painful, stinging thud lit my left earlobe up. Without thinking I covered my ear with my hand.  Tommy, of course.  I knew it before I whirled around.  The wolf imagery was entirely accurate: Pack tactics. Bullying by numbers. I’d created monsters that I could not control; whose only sense of loyalty was based on who helped them feel good about themselves and inflict pain on others. 

How fucking immature!  I understood Ivy’s hesitance. With how they were now, Ivy would be even more of an Amazon to them, and the rules of the game I’d created were to frustrate the Amazons and their Helpers as much as possible at every turn no matter how self destructive.

Wait a second!

Game!

A bolt of inspiration struck me!

“Ow,” I said, rubbing my ear.  “Good one!”

“Thanks,” Tommy said. He blinked and realized what he’d just admitted to.  “One what?”

I threw in a conspiratorial wink.  “Good,” I said, leaning in.  “Just don’t overdo it. I don’t want them to guess.”  Then, because I was still extremely petty, I stealthed my arm up to the other side of Tommy’s head and flicked the bottom of his ear.

“Ow!” Tommy jumped back, rubbing his ear. 

“Clark,” Melony gave away who she was watching, “that’s your last warning, too. Your Mommy is a lot closer than everybody else’s, young man.”

“Yes, Mrs.B!” I chirped back, filled with fake sunshine.

Tommy took the next symbol off of his schedule and stared at me.  “What are you talking about?  Who are we trying to fool?”

I took my own token, and turned my hands to the side of my face to create lip-reading blinders.  Using only my breath, I mouthed the word, “Ivy”.  

A malicious spark lit up in Tommy’s eyes.  I had him hooked!  I put down my hands and saw him rattle his head.  “No,” he mouthed.  I didn’t need to look over my head to know that I’d just been spared a second salvo from another member of the A.L.L.;  probably Billy.

********************************************************************************************************
Annie came and sat across from me during snacks, right on cue.  “What are you doing?” she asked me, point blank.  

“I’m sitting here with my new friend, Ivy.” I said. “Would you like to join us?” 

The only girl member of the A.L.L. narrowed her eyes. “Suuuure.”  She was suspicious, but receptive. Word about what I’d said to Tommy had gotten around to the rest of the group in between center rotations.  Being the most emotionally intelligent of my crew, Annie had come to verify for herself.

Thank goodness.

If there was a con, she’d be the one to sense it.  If something needed to get broken down in a language that even Billy could understand, she’d be the one to translate.  Meaning if I could sell Annie on leaving Ivy alone, she’d do the rest of the work for me.

“So…” Annie said. She gestured across the table. Ivy hadn’t left my side. “This is new. I heard you had a lot of fun together at the Fall Festival.”

“Yes,” Ivy agreed. “Lots of fun. Then Clark came over to my house and we played.”

“Oh really ?!” Annie looked like she wasn’t sure if she should be interested, amused, or offended.  Perhaps all three.  Whatever it was, she smiled in a way that vaguely reminded me of Brollish.  
I returned the look, and babbled like an idiot, never breaking eye contact.  “Oh yeah. Lots of fun. We bounced in the bouncy castles a whole lot! Just us Littles! My Mommy forgot to unbuckle my leash, but then Ivy did it for me.”

 Annie’s smile slowly mutated into something more genuine.  She looked directly at Ivy. “You did?”

Ivy blushed and looked away, smiling from the look of admiration on her peer’s face.  “Yeah.”

My strategy was elegant in its simplicity.  Ivy had grabbed my attention when I realized her strength could be used for more than just keeping Littles from running away in the bus loop. All I had to do to get her some social breathing room was sell the idea that staying on her good side could be valuable in the future. Ivy was too trusting and obedient on the whole to be a lookout, a schemer, or an instigator; but a Little that could remove Amazon strength diaper tapes was a golden flying unicorn that crapped rainbows.  One would have to be an idiot to not see the potential there.

It was a lie of omission, one that played on selfishness and the fantasy of escape, but it would work in the short term.  Speaking of short term, finding a way to manipulate my classmates towards my own constructive ends was keeping me from losing my temper and worrying about Tracy.

“Hey, Ivy,” I said. “Maybe your Mommy needs help passing out snacks?”  The Little Yamatoan looked weary, suspicious even. I got so close that I was practically kissing her. “Don’t worry,” I promised. “I’m not gonna tell her the story.”

Ivy leaned back away from me.  “Pinky swear?”

I wrapped my smallest digit around hers. “Pinky swear.” 

Ivy got up and waddled over to Zoge by the snack cabinets. Annie and I scanned the room to make sure Beouf was busy passing out paper towels.  “Seriously?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. She’s that strong. I saw it myself.”

Annie’s eyes glazed over with envy and a kind of greed like mine had no doubt been. It wouldn’t take much more to reel her in. And where Annie went, Billy and the others would follow like dominoes.

A knock at the back door interrupted my sales pitch.  No one said “come in”, but it creaked open anyway.

“Hell-o,” an unfamiliar voice called in.  “Knock-Knock.  Can I come in?”

An Amazon stepped inside the classroom carrying plastic cartons stacked on top of each other. “Is this Mrs. Beouf’s room?  The baby room?”  

My eye twitched. For obvious reasons, I did not like this woman, with her bleached blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail so tight that I could see her roots.  For half a second, I thought it was Helena Madra, but Amy’s Mommy had less severe features, and paler skin.  There was a resemblance, but only in the broadest strokes; like two actors auditioning for the same role.

This woman, wearing a bright red suit with a stiff skirt that went all the way down to her ankles and thin rimmed dark sunglasses perched on top of her head, had an air of entitlement and authority about her.  Like most Amazons, I could tell she was very used to getting her way. I didn’t think she was a school board member, but she could have been some kind of nebulous regional official; an unelected supervisor from the county.  If it were later in the year, I could see the cupcakes being some kind of Teacher Appreciation stunt, but it wasn’t even Winter Break yet.

Something in the back of my mind was brewing.  Why did she seem so familiar?

Beouf looked up from passing out paper napkins and walked to the back of her classroom.  “Hello,” she smiled. “How can I help you?”

The stranger extended her hand in greeting. “Hi there. Martha Dunwhich,” she said as if that was supposed to mean anything.

Dunwhich?  That did mean something, but not to Beoufl

Beouf took her hand and shook it.  “Melony Beouf, pleased to meet you, ma’am. What can I do for you?”

I popped my pacifier in my mouth and started working it furiously, biting and gnashing it.  I stared down at the activity table and did everything I could to slow my breathing.  This woman was largely a stranger to me, but I’d met her before.

“My daughter Emily’s birthday was yesterday,”  the Amazon said.  “She’s four years old!”

“Congratulations,” Beouf said.  She was being polite, but I could tell she was annoyed. A parent not connected to any of your students in interrupting your class- who wouldn’t be?

“And I wanted to let her celebrate her big day with all of her school friends,” the intruder droned on.  “But, I seemed to have bought too many cupcakes for the class and I wanted to see if your students wanted the extra.”

A murmuring broke out around me.  Free sweets were free sweets. They were Amazon sized too; they were practically burgers with chocolate frosting on top.  They probably weren’t spiked, but if they were, who cared? We were all padded up and denied potty privileges as it was. Nothing to lose.

I didn’t join in. Martha Dunwhich was the last parent I’d gotten to interact with before I had my accident right there in the I.E.P. meeting.  Her last words to me were,, “Why are you pooping your pants?” in the most condescending tone ever.

“That’s very generous,” Beouf replied. “We were just about to have snacks, but that’s a lot of sugar for their tummies.” 

Groans of protest erupted out of the mouths of my classmates..

“Oh no no,” what should have been my student’s parent said. “I totally agree. I’m not saying you have to pass them out now.  Mrs. Ambrose isn’t having our party until after lunch.”  She gestured behind her to what was supposed to be my classroom.  “I’ve got two more tins over there. You can have these and do whatever you want with them.”

I heard, but did not see Beouf hem and haw semi-theatrically.  “What do you think Mrs. Zoge?”

“I think it would be a very nice treat for them,” Zoge paused. “On the playground. After naps. If they’re good.”  

“Sounds like a plan,” Beouf said.  I looked up to the sound of resounding cheers as my mentor took the confections out of the intruder’s arms. I was gripping the edge of the table like it was a lap bar on a roller coaster.

I wanted this to be over.  I wanted this giant bitch to leave and get on with my day. I wanted to find ways to trick and manipulate my friends old and new so that none of them were mean to each other.  I wanted to not think about my classroom and the eerie silence that was emanating from it and what that might not mean.  I wanted to not accidentally hope that that might mean Tracy had come back in.

Annie did a double take looking from me to Dunwhich and back. She saw the look of recognition in my eyes  “Clark, who’s that?”  

“Clark?”  Dunwhich repeated it.  “Clark Gibson?”

She peered past Beouf and into the center of the room where I was sitting.  Eye contact was made and I froze.  She slipped past Beouf and hunkered down at the side of the table so that she was my eye level, gawking at me  “Oh my gosh! You’re so cuuuuute!” she trilled.

I bit down on rubber and gripped the table, doing my best to avoid eye contact.

Mission Failed. She just leaned in, grinning like Janet had on that first awful day.  “Look at you! In your romper, enjoying your paci.”

“Ma’am…” Beouf interjected.

My friend’s politeness was outright ignored.  I felt a hand reach under the table and grip at my feet. “Do you have widdle booties on? No. But that’s okay.”  Her hand shot back up over the table and wrenched my cheek.  “I bet you’re so much happier now that you’re out of those big boy clothes and have a Mommy or Daddy to take care of you instead of a yucky job.”

WHOMP!

Everyone froze. Beouf’s eyes went wide with surprise.

My fist slammed the table so hard that it thundered. I hadn’t even thought to do it. It just happened.

  “Whoah,” Dunwhich said, standing back up and out of range of my swings. “ Someone’s cranky!”  She wagged her finger at me. I couldn’t tell if she was mocking me or genuinely believed what she was saying. “Remember what your teacher said. Only good babies get cupcakes.”

Beouf side stepped in between us.  “Ma’am. Please don’t put your hands on my students.”

That ‘I want to speak to your manager’ energy I’d sensed started to boil and bubble up to the surface.  “I was only saying how cute he was!”  Then as if everyone hadn’t figured it out she swelled with pride and said.  “I was there when he pooped his pants, right in front of me. Didn’t even notice it or care until I pointed it out!”  I expected laughter but heard none, and it had nothing to do with the ringing in my ears. “I think he’s in a much more appropriate placement now, don’t you?” 

“I understand,” Beouf said, “but do you know his Mommy?”

“No, why?”

“Would you want anyone you didn’t know or approve of putting their hands on…on…”

“Emiwy,” I mumbled past my pacifier. 

“Would you want anyone you didn’t approve of putting their hands on Emily?” Beouf repeated. “Especially when she was a baby and couldn’t decide to say no to anyone?”

The intruder started to object. “Of course not. I went through three nannies because of…” she stopped as the gift of self-awareness loomed its ugly head.  “Oh.  But this is different.”

“How?”

“I wasn’t hurting him…” she sounded unsure. Possibly because I hadn’t stopped rubbing my throbbing cheek since she released me.  “Oh.  Oh.”  She took a step back.  “He’s just a Lit…” she stopped herself and Zoge walked over to open the back door a little wider, making it creak.
“Oh, baby,” she said to me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

I remained mute.

“Thank you for the cupcakes, ma’am.” Beouf said politely yet curtly.  “My class will enjoy them.”

Dunwhich regained some composure.  “You’re very welcome.  I’m going to get back to the preschool room.”

“Good idea.”

There was silence after she closed the door. No one said a word.  We either didn’t dare or didn’t know what to say.  “You handled that very well,” Melony told me.  I didn’t recoil at her touch when she petted me top of my head.

“For group story time today,” Zoge quietly suggested, “perhaps we should get one of the story books about how it’s okay to say ‘no’ sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Beouf nodded.  She removed her glasses, and rubbed her temples.  “And Mrs. Zoge?”

“Yes, Mrs. Beouf?”

“Let’s cut the cupcakes in half. Half now, half later.”

A raucous cheer went up at that.
************************************************************************************************************
Things were looking up all the way until Lunch that Monday. Gears were turning in motion as far as my social life, and I was running on a major sugar high.  Amazon cupcakes…holy fuck, those things were loaded with enough sugar to give a bull elephant diabetes! 

Close to two hours later and everyone was still buzzing like we’d downed three mugs of coffee.  I lied to myself and said I was going to insist that Janet put on that yoga video we’d found as soon as I got home.  The only thing I was really looking forward to was getting the other half of one of those cupcakes.

Even Ivy was bouncing up and down in her seat.

“Nap time is going to be a bust,” Beouf called over to Zoge as they sat us in our communal highchairs. 

“It was a mistake,” Zoge agreed, “but it was a good mistake.”

“Does that mean we can have more?” I asked while the bibs were busy being tied on and the trays of toddler friendly cafeteria food were being wheeled out.  My mentor gave me a look and the vaguest hint of a smile played at her lips.  “What?” I said. “Sugar us up, let us run around, and put us on the bus.  We’re not your problem after the bell rings.”

Beouf spooned up what could generously be called pasta and zoomed some towards my mouth. “I have to deal with you.”

I took the concoction that was at least fifty percent heated ketchup and swallowed. “Yeah, but I’m not a problem.  I’m friggin’ adorable.”  

If my old friend had been drinking milk it would have squirted out her nose. “Booger,” she grinned and switched to Ivy’s bowl.  “It’s a good thing I love you.”

“Do you love me, Mrs. B?” Tommy asked. “Can I have a cupcake?”  This resulted in a chain reaction.  Everyone wanted to be loved by the teacher all of a sudden if it meant getting the other half of that cupcake.

“You’ll all get the other half if you keep being good,” Beouf promised.  She stuck a spork into some limp over cooked green beans and slid them towards Tommy’s lips.  “Eat your veggies, baby boy.”

Twenty minutes in, when the majority of the cafeteria had already cleared out, I realized something.  Still no sign of Tracy.  Also no sign of Ambrose or any of my kids.  I could have sworn I saw them walk through the lunch line, same as always.  Had they finished already?

“Mrs. B,” I asked, “Where’s Miss Tracy’s class?”

Beouf looked behind her and paused. “Huh. I don’t know.  Maybe they’re doing something special for the birthday girl or something.”

That was a hard line of logic to follow.  The idea that Ambrose might do something fun or special for one of her students felt like such a stretch because it wasn’t promoting abject misery and terror. Given her druthers I could see Ambrose stuffing her face with the cupcakes in front of her students and forcing them to watch in silence.  That or conducting academic death matches to decide who gets a bite of frosting.

 There was also Emily’s mother to factor in. Dunwhich didn’t seem in a hurry to leave and without Tracy, Ambrose might have seen the benefit of allowing a parent volunteer. I could also very much see Dunwhich complaining to the principal if her daughter wasn’t given the princess treatment on the day after her special day.
“Anybody need an emergency change?” Beouf asked Zoge while we were being hitched together on the line leash.  

“Nothing that can’t wait until we get back to class,” Zoge said, tying me and Ivy together.

“Okay then,” Beouf said, leading the front.  “Let’s go back and try to take a nap,”  A giddy punchdrunk giggle made its way through the ten of us.  We waddled through the back door underneath the blow fan, and a yawn bellowed out of me. Sugar crash and a full stomach was finally starting to kick in.  A nap might be easier than Beouf anticipated.

We rounded the back corner out of the cafeteria as we always did and any chance of me allowing unconsciousness to claim me. Beouf had been correct: Ambrose was doing something special with the class.

Three and four year olds wore pointy party hats with elastic string chin straps holding them to the top of their heads. They sat cross legged on picnic blankets with disciplined expressions on their faces while a boombox was put on a chair blasting bland generic party music.

The overbearing helicopter parent who I’d been humiliated in front of walked from student to student, her daughter Emily pointing out which classmate of hers got which cupcake. The moment a child was given their dessert, all pretense and discipline left them and they shoved the massive baked good into their tiny mouths.  

“What do you say?” Mrs. Dunwhich asked.

“Fankoo!” the child gushed with crumbs and frosting spilling out of their mouths.

“And…?”

“Happy Birfday Emwy!”

 At a glance, it was kind of nice, actually. Nothing too flashy or over the top. Kids getting some very basic manners lessons and a treat. I spotted a box of loose sidewalk chalk just out of reach of the picnic blankets.  So the kiddos would get some play, too?

Ignoring the fact that that had once been my supply of chalk, I actually felt happy for my kids. But there three people missing from the picture: Tracy, Elmer, and Ambrose.  I knew where Tracy was, or rather wasn’t, but where were Elmer and Ambrose?

I got my answer right as we finished walking past the cafeteria.  Around the opposite corner from the one we’d circled around, near the front of the cafeteria, and just across from the entrance of the preschool classroom, Ambrose was down on one knee and growling at a red faced and crying Elmer.

Ambrose’s voice was too low for me to understand what she was saying, and Elmer’s distress had advanced to the point where all he was doing was shaking his head and blubbering, but I had a very good idea of what was going on; and it was very…very bad.

Elmer, my poor Tweener student had snot coming out of his nose and he was gripping onto his pants like it was a life raft in shark infested waters. Despite that he couldn’t hike them up far enough to hide the diaper bulge beneath his clothes. Elmer was completely potty trained, though.  But Ambrose was holding out one hand and pointing at the ground with the other.

She’d diapered him again, and was demanding that he take off the one bit dignity that was left to him.  No clue why.  His clothes were no more messy than anybody else’s his age; cleaner in fact.  Poor kid hadn’t even had a cupcake yet if his clothes were any indication. Not a trace of frosting on his face or fingers.

Beouf turned her head towards the noise. I saw her frown and mutter something to herself.  The line stopped with her for just a second, but we kept walking.  Office politics. Making a child cry, even one as sweet as Elmer, wasn’t a breach of professional conduct.  Neither was putting a diaper on a child who ‘needed it’ at teacher discretion.  Brollish might even let public humiliation slide if Ambrose dressed it up in the right way. It’s not like anyone else would stand up for the poor kid. 

Enough was enough.

I reached forward and flicked the air. “Tommy,” I whispered. Tommy flinched and looked over his shoulder.  “I’m about to do something awesome, tell Billy in front of you to get ready.’  He looked doubtful but I ignored him and tapped Ivy beside me on the shoulder.

“Ivy,” I hissed over to her.  “Undo my buckle! Hurry!”  We were approaching the breezeway and fast.

“What?” Ivy whispered back, sounding afraid.  I was asking her to do something she knew was against the rules. 

“Don’t worry,” I promised. “You won’t get in trouble. I’ll say I tricked you. Just do it! Hurry!”

“But I-”

“I’ll do whatever you want,” I interrupted.  “I’ll let you hug me as hard as I can. You can kiss me on the cheek whenever you want. Or the lips, I don’t care!” I jostled the immovable buckle around my torso and legs. “Just get me out of this thing!”

Real, tangible fear lit up the Little Yamatoan’s expression .“Can’t you wai-?”

“Ivy!” I cut her off,, my cheeks feeling suddenly wet.  “There’s a little kid back there, a real little kid, who is being picked on, Ivy! He’s being picked on because he’s different for things that he can’t help! And you’re the only one that can help him.” I tugged again at the buckle. “Now, Ivy!”

Deceptively strong yet tiny hands shot out and squeezed the release latch. I slipped out of the harness and sprinted back towards the cafeteria before the woven tether touched the cement.. 

Everything went into slow motion while my heart pounded fire into my veins.  Zoge cried out and reached out to try and stop me, calling my name.  Chaz’s laughter mixed with her screams and he rocked back as hard as he could in the moving stroller, forcing her to try to break his fall or stop my escape.  

Heads must have whipped around fast enough to break the sound barrier and cries went out with “Clark!” being shouted out the way most people screamed “Fire!”   Heavy footsteps were cut short with confused shouts of “Look out!” and crocodile tear cries announcing Annie and Billy entering the fray, tripping up Beouf, yanking around the rest of the class, and generally getting underfoot so that she couldn’t catch up in time. Already, Tommy was shouting something along the lines of “Ivy did it! Ivy!”

 Screams and laughter. Screams and laughter.  Would be anarchists and brats, model prisoners and babies all raising their voices as sacred routine, ritual, and daily transition were broken.  To some it was glorious. to others, terrifying. 

Along the side of the building, pudgy frosting covered hands pointed at my approach while the one other adult was busy trying to select the perfect cupcake for her precious princess.

I didn’t consciously hear or see any of that.  I only pieced it all together after the fact. Tunnel vision and hearing had me. A primal, vicious instinct took over.  The one coherent word out of my mouth was a bellowing “HEY!” causing Ambrose to look right at me.

No satisfaction filled me while my fist collided perfectly with her snout of a nose.  No thoughts of how I was ending it all by swinging as hard as I could and bopping this finless dead eyed shark as hard as I could.  My face wasn’t capable of expressing any joy while bones and cartilage crunched and bits of blood came away onto my knuckles.

There’s an old saying: “Show me a man who resorts to violence, and I’ll show you a man who’s run out of good ideas.”

I guess I’d just run out of good ideas…

Time sped up when I drew back my fist.  “MOTHER! FUCKER!”  Ambrose covered her face and roared. I went to swing again but before I could a meaty paw of a hand smacked me across the face and knocked me off my feet.  My ears rang and my breath raced out of my chest while my body collided with the ground, my skin burning as my arms skidded across the rough concrete.  This must have been what it was like to get kicked in the head by an emu or something!
Dizzy and bewildered I started flying, being hoisted up in the air, jerked around as if by a crane, my face hovering over the ground as tendrils of  lightning started sparking against my backside.  I was three spanks in before it finally registered to my body what was happening.

More screaming and shrieking and crying.  None of it from me because I didn’t have the air to do it.  My lungs contracted but would not inhale. My body kicked and tensed and flopped but had no more potency than a ragdoll.  Lion would have taken a better beating.

The only signs of life my body provided were the tears, snot, and piss that were getting beat out of me while I agonized with every cell of my brain and body certain that this was the end.  I was going to die.  

Everything was over. I was going to die.  In mind if not body.  Body too, more than likely. The ogre was going to beat me to death, I was sure. 

“PUT HIM DOWN!” came Beouf’s roar.  It still sounded far away.  Everything sounded far away.

More cries from all around me, but the pain didn’t stop.  The thundering blows rained down on me like falling meteorites, and I just went limp.

“STOP!”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

The screams, shouts, and protests all mixed together into a chaotic dirge. Classroom doors opened, and onlookers peered out into the bubbling chaos. Littles, students, and teachers added their voices to the song.

“HOLY FU-!”

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

“STO-!”

THWACK! THWACK!

“SOMEBODY GET THE PRI-!”

THWACK! THWACK!

“CLAR-!”

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

“SOMEBODY CALL THE CO-!”

THWACK!

“GIBSO-!”

THWACK!

“DON’T-!”

THWACK! THWACK!

“SOMEBODY GET MISS GRA-!”

THWACK!

“I’M FILM-!”

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

“PUTA! PUT THAT LIT-!”

THWACK!

“BOSS!”

WHOOMF!  

The world blurred forward for a few feet. The sound of flesh being struck still thundered in my ear for a few seconds, but no direct pain registered.  I was beyond pain, now.  Something had changed though.. I was on the ground, again, but couldn’t see anything. 

Something, or someone was huddled over me, wrapping me up, shielding me. I breathed in and my lungs felt like they were stabbing me from the inside with thousands of tiny needles. A ragged gasping cry gurgled out of me. And it happened again.  And again.  And again.

All the while, my savior held me closer and tighter, squeezing me gently and supporting my head, pressing me up close to them; almost cradling me.

“GET AWAY FROM MY WIFE!”  I heard a deep, masculine voice crack the air like thunder.

“YOU DO NOT EVER….EVER!...PUT YOUR HANDS ON A STUDENT LIKE THAT!” Another voice screamed.

“HE BOKE MUH DOSE!  DUH IDDUH BAT BOKE MUH DOSE!”

“IS THAT MIST-?”

“DID YOU SEE THAT?!” 

“THAT LITTLE JUST RAN UP TO HER AND-!”

“IS HE O-?”

“BACK INSIDE CHIL-!”

“WHY DID HE-?!”

“WHY WAS SHE-?”

“CLARK?!”

Through my continued wailing and impact scrambled brain cells I was unable to recognize any of the myriad of voices that were screaming their outrage for and against me.  The first voice I actively recognized was the one nearest to me, with her body directly on top of mine, shielding me as best she could from further blows.

“It’s okay, Boss,” Tracy whispered softly to me.  “I’ve got you. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.  I’ve got you, Boss. I’ve got you.”

 

[Official Patreon Migration Link Thread]

On 1/8/2024 at 7:58 AM, starman said:

Have you a link as coming back as no such creator

Yeah. The link worked for me too.

[Do gay/bi guys wet the bed more?]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:51 AM, Little Sherri said:

I worded it this way, though: 

I didn't burden my hypothesis with the requirement that all bedwetting be driven by stress and/or regression. There are physiological explanations (and probably other psychological ones outside of stress, as well) for bedwetting in kids and/or adults. But you might be able to find a statistically significant correlation between a population of youths who are perhaps more stressed than average, and, an elevated incidence of stress-influenced behaviours, such as bedwetting, but also probably including anything from overeating to anorexia, other forms of self harm, insomnia, maybe even migraines, who knows. 

But I agree that correlation does not prove causation. And I enjoy tossing the ball back and forth with people who can think and express themselves. Cheers. 

Ignore Baby Keiff. If you look through their post history, you'll likely see a lot of starting arguments for the sake of it, gross leaps of logic, willful ignorance, and other forms of trolling.   That's what I've seen in my interactions with them.

My own personal opinion?  The question seems more than a bit silly to me, but it doesn't look like you were being disrespectful in the asking of it. 

 

[Personalias's Flash Fictions (Company Time)]

Company Time

You love shitting on company time. That’s what you call it most every morning when you go to use the office toilet. Calling it that started out as a way to get over your own public restroom neuroses.  The cramped little room with just a sink, a mirror, and a toilet all surrounded by walls thin enough to make you feel like you were going in front of the whole office would make anybody a little gun shy.  Over the years, the thought has mutated into your own quiet act of rebellion.

With the way the economy is you might never own a house or go on vacation or ever have enough money to retire.  Like everybody else you’re still living paycheck to paycheck since moving out of your parents’ place.  But the thought that the office technically pays for you to sit and zone out on the toilet for five to ten minutes everyday makes you giggle like a toddler. As soon as you thought of it like that your bladder and bowels became a little less nervous; talk about a different sort of potty training.  

The roar of the toilet flushes announces your departure from the bathroom and you do a wide right turn into the office kitchen past Susan by the copy machine.  Barry is leaning against the counter, nursing from a mug. “Coffee?” he moves out of the way so that you can get to the boiling pot beside him.

“No thanks,” you say.  Normally you can’t function without your morning cup of joe. It’s another one of those tiny conveniences that you like to avail yourself of if only to feel like you’re taking advantage of the company.  For whatever reason, you’re just not feeling it today.  Perhaps it’s because you’ve already taken your morning dump, thus the coffee would only serve the purpose of making you more alert.

Dang, you’ve been here too long. You can’t even remember when you started working here.  All the days and faces have just sort of blurred together through the years.  You really need to get out of this place. Quit this job and find someplace else to work.  But then what would you do? Shit on your own time? No thank you.

Nothing in the morning box of donuts looks particularly appetizing, so you grab a bagel and start waddling over to your desk.

Waddling?

You blink, but your eyes stay wide open.  The air itself goes static like the space between channels on a beat up old television. What’s going on?!

On your last exhale you were at your job.  On your next inhale you are somewhere very, very different.

You’re in a place for kids: A daycare. Maybe a preschool.  A giant one. The ceiling is as high as a ballroom. Toys litter the floor and colorful posters with cartoon characters on them encourage you to ‘be a good baby’, ‘forget your troubles’, and ‘obey’. In your hand where the bagel was is the biggest teething ring you’ve ever laid eyes on.

As for yourself, you’re standing barefoot while wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a soft poofy diaper. What’s more, you feel a distinct lump resting in the back of it. You smell it too.

Two giant arms grab you and launch you skyward.  You let out a shriek as an incredibly loud voice proclaims. “Upsy daisy!”  If you had anything in your bladder before, you certainly don’t now.

You’re pivoted around and draped over the giant’s shoulder. You feel the impossibly large hand pat your padded bottom and squish the diaper’s contents up against you.  “Somebody needs a changey!”

You almost call out for help, but when you look out into the pastel colored coliseum all you see are other giants, compared to whom you are a toddler at best, and your coworkers; also dressed in babyish garments and thickly diapered.  The only difference between you and them is they all seem to be having a blast while they babble and drool on the floor. Sharon is chewing on a cardboard book and Barry is nursing from a baby bottle!

A few strides later, you’re staring up at the ceiling while the giant is rummaging around for powder and wipes with one hand and pinning you with the other.  You must be on a changing table of some sort.

“Please! No!” You shout as her hands go for the tapes on your diaper.

She stops, her eyebrow arching in curiosity, but not fear.  “Beg pardon?”.

“I’m not a baby!”  It’s all you can think to say.

“Okay,” she chirps. “Do you still want out of this messy diaper, sweetie?”

Of course you do!  You’re not even supposed to be wearing one of these…things! “Yes!”

SCRITCH-SCRITCH.

That’s enough for her to rip the velcro tabs off and start wiping your privates down. Your protests are drowned out by her cooing while she dusts your bum with sweet smelling powder and slips a fresh diaper beneath you.

“Denise!” the giantess calls while she tapes the infantile undergarment around your waist. “Can I get a fresh bottle?  Someone hasn’t had their ‘morning coffee’ yet!”

A rubber nipple finds its way to your mouth and your lips begin to automatically suckle, as if by reflex.  “That’s right,” the giant praises. “Good baby. Drink it all up!” She giggles to herself.  “Drink it all up and go bye-bye. You’re not a baby. You’re an adult.  It’s not baby time! It’s company time! That’s right! Yes it is! Yes it is! Now go do big important business stuff!”

A few involuntary swallows later and the world blinks again.

You’re sitting at your desk, sipping from a full mug of freshly made coffee.  The scream of existential terror rattles out of your throat, but no one seems to mind it over much despite this being a place of business.

“Ooof,” you hear Barry say. “Somebody’s not a morning person. Sounds like the coffee hasn’t kicked all the way in.”

“I feel the same way,” Sharon agrees. “I really need to get out of here and find a new job.”

“Yup. Now if you excuse me, I got some business to attend to.”

“In the bathroom?”

“If you gotta go, go on company time.”

They both laugh.  You drink more coffee, hoping it will help you forget and ignore the obvious bulk in your pants.

[Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapter 129 Uploaded!)]

Chapter 108: Moonshine Memories and Mentor Meditations

“Careful son,” Herbert Braun said. “There’s moonshine in that lemonade. Have too much at once and you won’t need one of your coworkers to make you piss yourself.”

Casie scoffed. “Dad!” 

“Bert…” his wife warned him.  The old song and dance wasn’t old yet, and I was just stupid enough to try and challenge my father-in-law to a drinking game on what was supposed to be a casual weekend visit.

“What?” Bert said to his wife. “Blackout drunk is blackout drunk. You take too much moonshine too fast and you either vomit everything up or you pass out and you piss your pants. Or both.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, Bert, and you know it.”  

The barest hint of a smile played underneath Bert’s mustache. The games had unofficially begun.

We were in the kitchen of the Braun’s heavily modified trailer, sitting at the table: Cassie, Bert, Irene, and me. Cassie’s sister, Michelle, was out and about; chasing boys, doing online college courses or both. Just us married and working folks.  

In front of us were paper plates and Little sized hot dog buns.  They cost more per unit that the Amazon sized hot dog meat which had to be chopped up and spread out in bite sized pieces to fit on the bun. To cover that up, they were drenched in so many toppings that you might not guess there was a hot dog underneath. 

Next to the plates were tall, clear, Tweener sized plastic cups that wouldn’t fit in the top rack of a Little-centric washing machine. They had logos for sports teams I didn’t care about, but oh the things you can find at a garage sale.  

I’d taken barely a sip when Bert worked in his little quip, and I set the glass back down.  So it was gonna be like that, eh?  Bert subtly nodded.  Yup. It was gonna be like that.

Bert Braun’s baseline parenting style was definitively old school. True and tender shows of emotion and affection were rare. Criticisms and competition were expected.  Cassie warned me as much when we’d reached the ‘Meet the Parents’ stage of our relationship.  My own dad was much the same way; same with my mother.

To their generation, and likely many more before, support and love didn’t need to be affirmed because it was assumed. One didn’t need to tell family members they loved them any more than they needed to remember that the sky was blue.  

It was known. A fact of life. A pledge that had to be renewed every day was less powerful than a once in a lifetime commitment.  When I brought that philosophy back up around Bert and Irene’s anniversary dinner one year, Bert’s exact words were, “Clark. Don’t get punched in the teeth.” 

A criticism though? A challenge? That was just a game. A way to test yourself and keep your wits sharp.  Life was a competition of sorts.  Might as well keep it going at home. 

“Bet,” I said.

I picked up the glass with both hands, glugged it down, and slammed it on the kitchen table.  

“Another!” A second later my face felt fuzzy, my stomach gurgled in protest, and the room was just spinny enough where I might need to concentrate in order to walk.  I wrinkled my nose and the gasoline aftertaste kicked in, sneaking up just behind the powdered lemonade.  “Maybe without the moonshine though…”

Irene chuckled and refilled my glass from a pitcher that hadn’t been spiked.  Bert smirked, downed about a third of his glass and put it down.  Not sipping gingerly, just not chugging it like an idiot.  Ever her father’s daughter, Cassie did the same and then some.

“URP!”

“URP!”

“URP!”

“Savages,” Irene said. “Complete savages.  I don’t know where I went wrong.’  She bit into her hashed up hotdog and took a sip of boozy lemonade.

“Maybe it’s genetic,” I offered, motioning between father and daughter.  “Maybe it’s parenting.”
 
The color was rising to Cassie’s cheeks, and she was looking at me with flirty bedroom eyes. The moonshine was hitting her, too.  We were so gonna fuck later… “How does that explain you?”

I scrunched up my face and overacted like a teenager in a made for T.V. movie.  “From you! I learned it from watching you!” Talking circles around Cassie was easy when she was tipsy. It was even easier when I was tipsy because I didn’t over analyze every little thing.  Between Cassie, Bert, and Irene, if I could out talk them while drunk, I could definitely talk around your typical everyday Amazon while sober.

This wasn’t self medicating, it was weight training for my mind.

I buried my hands in my face to keep up the fake crying and felt the tipsy topsy turvy-ness of the world more acutely with my eyes closed. That was a mistake! I cut the act and attacked the hotdog, hoping the sensory input and fuller stomach would accomplish something.  

Okay…yeah…I was feeling the moonshine too.  Mistakes had been made.

If Bert was feeling the effects of it, he wasn’t showing it. “First week of work stressing you out that much?” Bert asked me. He fingered toward my glass.  “You don’t normally drink like that when the sun is up.”

Cassie defended me.  “You do, Dad.”

“Yeah, well that’s me,” Bert said. “What’s his excuse?”

I chewed and swallowed about half of my hotdog mush and wiped my mouth. “No excuse, Bert,” I said. “Just enjoying getting to act like an actual adult.  This was week three by the way. One for setup, two with the kids.”

Bert arched an eyebrow, which in my experience had been the closest I’d seen to him showing concern.  “Actual…adult?”

I took a few gulps of lemonade. My blood alcohol level had already skyrocketed past the point where my body was telling me to shove everything into my mouth and I was focusing on my father-in-law to stop that from happening.  

“Yeah, you know.  Right?” I looked over at Cassie.  Fuck I was already running out of gas. “Right?”

“He’s the only Little at his school,” Cassie explained.

I snapped my fingers. “Yeah! That’s what I mean. So…yeah…that.”  

Bert was unimpressed. “Hm.”

I closed my eyes, inhaled and put on my best professional teacher face. “Okay, okay, okay. Hear me out,” I said. “You know how when you do a job, I talk one way to Littles, one way to Tweeners, and one way to Amazons?  Different levels of..of…being on guard?”

Bert lowered his eyebrow back down. “Yeah,” he said.

“Most of my co-workers are Amazons,” I said. 

My father-in-law nodded upward. “Ah. So as far as coworkers go, you’re heavy on the ‘work’ but not so much on the ‘co’.”

“Pretty much,” I took another bite of hotdog. “They’re not mean or openly trying to Adopt me. They’re just…Amazons.”  Correction, the receptionist at school was definitely taking an unhealthy interest in me.  If she wasn’t actively gunning to Adopt me, she was watching me like a hawk and waiting for me to fail.  Same for the Vice-Principal.  

Best not tell the family that, lest they frown on me working at Oakshire Elementary.

“Do you have lots of interactions with Amazons, Clark?” Cassie’s mom asked. She was curious but suspicious. I heard that tone from Cassie often enough to recognize where she got it from.

I felt a kind of dip in my perception. The room spun a little bit faster and then slowed. I already felt like I was starting to come down and sober up.  Nope! Never mind. I was approaching sensory overload.

Fuck it. I took a bunch of lemonade and gulped it down.  “Not really,” I said. “I tend to…tenta…tenta.” Damn it. “I. Tend. To. Keep. To. Myself.” If I were more sober I’d be embarrassed at how hard it is to enunciate.  Another deep breath and I spat out the next line like it was rehearsed from a play. “I’ve got a teacher’s aide, but other than that and faculty meetings, it’s just me and the kids.”

The center of the table had more cutlets. I reached out to load them up on another bun when Cassie practically smacked me in the face with her words.  “That and your mentor.”  Ooof. Phrasing!

“Mentor?” Irene said. “I thought you had a degree already.”

I recovered and started piling on onions, sweet relish, shredded cheese, ketchup, mustard, and mayo. Oh gosh I was gonna regret this later, but it looked so delicious in the moment. “Not that kind of mentor,” I told them. “She’s more like the person I’m supposed to go to when I have a procedural question. What paperwork to file where and when. That kind of thing.”  I took a bite and swallowed.  The ratio to booze and bites in my bloodstream was starting to level out.

“She’s the Little’s teacher.”  Cassie said. She took a massive gulp of lemonade.

Well…fuck.

My in-laws didn’t reply.  Irene’s eyebrows were skyrocketing towards the ceiling and Bert’s were knitting together into a unibrow.  Verbal sparring and outmaneuvering Amazons was easy. Cassie had just upped the difficulty with hard mode.

“Yeah,” I admitted, and shrugged like it was no big deal.  “She teaches the Maturosis and…and…” I snapped my fingers rapidly like I was trying to recall a bit of trivia.  “Maturosis and Developmental Plateau Unit.”

“The hell does that mean?”  Bert asked. His brows had yet to unknit.

“It means she breaks Littles,” Cassie finished her drink.
She got me that scooter. She let me go to the job interview. She helped us buy the house in a mostly Amazon neighborhood. Right now she was saying stuff that might start a fight between me and her family.  Sometimes I didn’t understand my wife.

Time to retake the narrative.

“It’s a relatively new fad,” I explained. “Basically, there are Amazons who are pretending that Littles have a disease.  They’re trying to justify the whole ‘adoption’ thing with some psychological, neurological, genetic mumbo jumbo.”

“Not just trying to call us immature before they take us.”  It did not sound good coming from Bert.  “We’re now defective on top of it.”

I didn’t want to defend Maturosis.  It was bullshit pseudo-science at best and a cult at worst.  I just didn’t want my family to worry about me. “Look,” I said. “Beouf is crazy. She’s an Amazon. She’s a nutter. Her world view is skewed.  But she’s not directly malicious.”

“Is she indirectly malicious?” Irene asked.  

Nobody but me was eating anymore.  I put down my second dog and let out an exasperated sigh.  It was bad enough that I was on my toes the moment I got on campus.  I didn’t want my inlaws trying to constantly shame me for taking a risky career path. We couldn’t all be artists and handymen. Shit like this was exactly the reason I was drinking.

“I don’t think she’s actually a teacher,” I admitted. “But she knows a lot of legitimate educational theory and practices.  Stuff I just got done learning about in college. Looking at her lesson plans and room set up, the worst thing she does is she treats her prisoners like actual children.”

“That’s better?” Irene asked.

“According to guidance records and I.E.P’s, she’s got a two to three year rollover period before dismissal.”

Bert was now squinting his eyes.  The man had no face from the nose up. “Meaning…?”

“Meaning she’s mindfucking them but isn’t doing hypnosis and drugs and shit. It doesn’t take three years for hypnosis to plunge somebody past the point of no return.”  The significance wasn’t landing with them.  

“And…?”

“It means she’s a true believer.” I paused for effect. “She literally believes the poor sons of bitches in diapers are babies. But she also believes that Littles who haven’t been caught yet aren’t.”
They didn’t seem impressed.

  
Arguing was literally sobering me up. Adrenaline was the greatest drug of all sometimes. 

 “I’ve been putting out feelers for like…close to a month, now,” I said.  “No offers of food or drink. No wanting to get me to watch anything. She’s avoided the subject of bathrooms entirely so far.  No asking if I’m tired or needing a nap. No baby talk. No trying to hold me or carry me.”  Her assistant, this Yamatoan woman old enough to be my mother, had offered…but I wasn’t going to mention that.  “Calls me Mr. Gibson.  She literally helped me set up my classroom by moving heavy shit and reaching and then asked me to return the favor.”

Cassie blinked. I hadn’t told her this part.  That and/or she was getting more drunk.  “What kind of favor?”

“Nothing big,” I said. “Unstacking and moving tiny chairs. Unpacking bins from cabinets. She’s almost forty. She’s tall.  She doesn’t want to bend over as much.  It’s not like she’s asking me to climb up on her changing table or anything.”  

Wrong move, Clark. Wrong move.  Your family is worried about you and you just admitted that your co-worker has a changing table in her classroom. Maybe I wasn’t as sober as I thought I was. 

They weren’t coming at this from the same outlook as I was. Amazons were crazy, but they were also bad faith actors and self-serving. This was true; just not as true as they thought.

 “Oh yeah,” I said, remembering, “She donated some old toys for my students to play with. Would an Amazon purposefully give something meant to sabotage LIttles so that they were in the hands of actual children?”

Bert’s jaw worked and wiggled for a second.  “I don’t suppose she would.  Awful nice of her though.  Just donating toys and supplies like that.” 

“It’s kind of an unwritten rule in schools. Teachers try to look out for each other.” 

Irene reached out and grabbed a second helping.  “You teach three year olds and have to supply their toys?”  Bert glanced at her. “What? Three olds need playtime. I don’t care how humongous they are.”

Yes! Irene was getting it! People could be shit, but children were still children! 

“Anything that isn’t a chair, a desk, printer paper, or a mandated textbook of some kind is out of pocket, unfortunately,” I said. “Beouf says she’s gonna help me write a mini-grant so I can get some better materials for free.  Puzzles, games, educational toys.”

“Maybe we can go to a few garage sales,” Irene offered. “Get some toys that neighbor kids have outgrown.”

“Hell yeah!” I almost slurred. “Not that I’m a daycare. But like you said, they’re three.  All work and no play.”

“This Buff,” Bert slugged back the rest of his cocktail.  I didn’t know if he mispronounced her name on purpose or not. “Did she let you pick the toys yourself, or did she pick them out?” 

Trap incoming!  “I’m not sure if I like where this is going,” I said. “If I say ‘yes’ you can talk about how she’s eyeballing me and trying to create a justification or something.  If I say ‘no’ you can make the claim that she’s only giving my class the toys she knows are safe.”

The women folk stared at the patriarch.  “He’s got a point, honey.”

“Okay,” I said, placing my palms on the table.  “Let me lay it all out: Would this lady rescue me if your average typical Amazon put me in a diaper? Probably not.  But is she gonna be the one that diapers me? I don’t think so.”

I started putting out all the different calculations I’d made so far.  “She’s got a daughter in highschool she talks about, so there’s no empty nest syndrome going on yet, and her job is to literally play teacher with eight or nine Littles who already got caught. I think that particular itch is thoroughly scratched. And other than the introduction, she doesn’t tend to talk about her whack theories. She bitches about administration. She complains how she needs a drink at the end of the day.  She talks about union stuff.  She…”  I almost brought up how she saved me my first day on the job by invoking the union card.

“She what?” Cassie asked.  I don’t know if everyone was swaying, or whether it was just me.

“She curses sometimes and doesn’t act offended if I curse.”  I saw Bert’s eyes again. Amazons hated using ‘naughty words’ around people they supposedly thought were babies.  

“I’m not saying I’m friends with her,” I hammered on. “I’m not saying that I’m gonna be hanging out with her every day before or after school or that we’re going to be helping each other more than ‘hey can I borrow some supplies’ or whatever.  I’m saying that this lady is both bugnuts baby crazy and extremely sincere at the same time. I’m probably safer around her than any of the other giants.”

Bert’s face softened.  Not a lot, but I knew him well enough to tell I’d scored some points.  “Alright,” he said. He got up and fetched the pitcher of moonshine and lemonade. 

“You’re welcome,” Cassie whispered to me, nuzzling me.  She was feeling it too.

“For what?” I hissed back.

“Getting the fight over with.”

She…okay she had a point. I wouldn’t have brought any of this up if not for her.  I kissed her on the lips. One  kiss became two. Then three. Then four. Our tongues started exploring.

“Ahem,” Bert said.  He’d had just as much to drink as us but still seemed completely sober. 

We stopped and remembered where we were. “Glad you feel you’ve got a good handle on your work situation,” Irene said, smoothing things out.

“Just don’t drink any coffee she tries to give you.” Bert filled up his class and topped off mine.  “Can’t have you getting tossed in a crib before I become a Pop-Pop.”

“Bert!”

“Dad!”

Bert grinned, full out grinned. It was kind of terrifying. Old man loved pushing buttons almost as much as his son-in-law.  “What? I just want the boy to be careful.  Play with fire and get burned and all that.”

Cassie kept her hand on my shoulder. “Clark’s very good at reading Amazons. He knows how to be very charming when he has to be.”

“Thank you, hon….I think.”  That got a good natured chuckle from the table.

“Enough about co-workers,” my mother-in-law chimed in. “What about the kids?”

“What do you teach a three year old anyway?”

“Three and four, actually,” I said. “And I’m working on a lot of things with them.”  I sipped the lemonade and winced the awful aftertaste again. Yup. This was the moonshine. “Right now it’s mostly how not to be toddlers.”

“Whaddya mean…?” Bert glugged back more moonshine and shook his head like he’d just been slapped. Finally he was relaxing enough to look drunk.  

“Most of my kids are first and only children,” I started.

“Amazons only send their oldest to school?” Bert interrupted.

“They’re three, Bert.”  Irene said. “If they have younger siblings they’re too young.” She looked at me. “Continue,”

I nodded gratefully to my mother-in-law. “So I’m working on turn taking, sharing, conflict resolution, that kind of stuff. How to work and play with other people besides pushing and screaming.”

“I’ve met a couple people who still need to learn how to do that,” Bert chuckled.

“There’s a reason I only work online,” Cassie agreed.

Irene raised her giant cup and clinked it across the table with Cassie. “Here here”

Fuck it.  Worst of it was over. I took another gulp.  “Yeah, I’m also doing letters, numbers, shapes, colors, all that stuff,” I said. “But doing the other stufffirst.”  Yeah, no. I was well and truly drunk and wasn’t going to recover until I slept it off.  Too bad it was only one in the afternoon.

“Can’t learn if you can’t act right,” Bert agreed.

“Yeah.  That an’ potty trainin’.”  I shook. “God I gotta do a looooootta potty training this year.”

“Hm?” Bert melted forward.  Oh gosh I might actually drink him under the table. “Why?”

“None of my kids are potty trained!” I half shouted on accident. “None!”

“All in Pull-Ups?”

I laughed.  “Ha! Workin’ on it. Got two of them in Pull-Ups.”

Irene’s jaw dropped. “What about the rest? Diapers? At three?”

I nodded with the dumbest, smuggest look on my face. “Some of them are four. Their parents have barely tried or have given up.”

“How do you even change them?” Irene said. She was by far the most sober and her eyes were crossing, imagining the physics involved with me trying to clean up a three year old that outweighed me.  

“That’s the best part,” I said. “I don’t. Little hands can’t even rip at the tapes. So I make my assistant do it! She’s already getting sick of it and calling parents with me to get them to switch.  The ones in Pull-Ups I make change themselves.”

Bert was still visibly puzzling things out.  “Do the kids have special needs? Medical needs? Something with their musculature?”  

Wow. Bert giving Amazons the benefit of the doubt. He really was drunk.  “Some of them are um…whatchamacallit…developmentally delayed.  Fine motor problems, speech and language delays, late bloomers and such, but as far as I can tell there’s no reason why they should be standing up in the middle of circle time so they can squat back down and take a dump.”

“Typical Amazon parenting, sounds like.”  Bert said. “Like they’re compensating for something.”

“Amen.’ It was Bert and I’s turn to clink thick plastic glasses.

“What do you think about the Littles in Beouf’s room?” Casie asked. 

“Honestly?” I said, starting to feel the slightest bit woozy again.  “I don’t.”  That was met with somber and respectful nods all around.  Probably for the best.

There wasn’t much point in fretting over Littles that had been captured and put back inside padded pants.  It was like mourning the dead. You did it when you could emotionally afford to, but then you moved on and tried to live your life.

The world wasn’t fair, but we all played the game and took our chances every time we walked out the door or talked to someone taller than us.  All those poor bastards in Beouf’s class had played the game and slipped up at some point along the way.  They’d been too friendly or too distant or too trusting or too cute or too beautiful or too handsome or too sickly or too independent.  It was bullshit, yeah, and sometimes it was just dumb luck of wrong place wrong time, but every Little past five knew about the dangers of the world on some level.

Every Little, it turns out, except for Ivy Zoge.

*************************************************************************************************
The Sunday after Ivy told me her entire life story I wouldn’t leave my room.  I sat on the carpet with my back up against the crib leg, clutching Lion like he needed the comfort instead of me. The words didn’t vibrate in my throat but I kept mouthing “The fuck?” again and again to him.  Lion knew what I meant.  He didn’t have any answers though.

My onesie was periwinkle blue and very comfortable, my diaper was soaked, and I didn’t care. Not griping about my outfit was a form of self-flagellation. Janet had been treating me with super kid gloves since we’d come back.  Ice cream for dessert, and a shower with Janet hadn’t made me feel any better. We weren’t cold to another, but there was weight between us yet unvoiced.  I fell asleep that night without struggle, craving the oblivion of unconsciousness.

 It was probably for the best.  If I’d talked more I’d probably have said something I’d regret that would only hamper me in the long run.  Such tactics would be unwise.

Tactics?  Why the fuck did I care about tactics?  I was dead. I had died. I had lost.  Clark Gibson was a memory and a myth.  Legally I was dead and reborn. I was a ghost lingering with the idea that I might yet raise myself from a lavender scented afterlife.

Regrets? Of course! Bad mistakes? More than a few!  But I’d gotten to make them! I’d gotten to grow! I’d gotten to live!  My life was in stuffed animal shambles, but it had been MINE!  I’d taken my chances and made out better than a lot of folks my size; or at least a lot longer!

Poor Ivy never even got that chance. She never got to play the game.  When she was kissing and crushing on me and asking me those bizarre questions, she hadn’t been trying to recapture something that had been taken from her.  She’d been longing for experiences that no one had ever offered her.

Gaslit and betrayed by her own flesh and blood parents. The girl was older than me but never got to grow up.  Not even close.  She would have only been a bit older than my students when her parents got a doctor’s note allowing them to shove her back into diapers and put her back in daycare.  It’d be like me deciding it would be too much effort to teach my students and somehow finding a way to shove them into Beouf’s room.

Why? For what reason?  Because of some genetic anomaly? Because she was done growing? Because she was socially awkward and nervous at school…for a five year old?    

Who the fuck did that to their own kid?! Who gave up on their own family that goddamn fast?! Who would deprive a literal child of decades of development and life experience because they were born short?!  

“Typical!” I mouthed to Lion.

No!   

That was worse than typical!  

What had been done to Ivy was downright Yamatoan. That was the only word for it.

Yamatoans were the most Amazon of Amazons and how Ivy had been raised really showed how they saw the rest of the world: Judging people by one metric and only one metric.  A stupid one that couldn’t be controlled, no less.

“How?” I mouthed.  “Just how?! The fuck?!”  Lion had no wisdom in his black beady eyes and no friendly comfort in his stitched up smile.  Stupid plush never did.

I’d hated Ivy. I’d resented her. I’d manipulated her. I’d ostracized her. I’d detested and caused her harm. Just like an Amazon, I had been willfully cruel to her for things completely beyond her control that caused harm to no one.   The fact that I hadn’t known her exact circumstances didn’t make me feel any better. 

 I’d done all of it specifically to make myself feel superior to her in one way or another.  I’d craved that moral high ground; that toxic false integrity that I was so willfully resisting compared to her.  I’d made it longer than her without getting caught and I’d keep my sense of self longer too. I’d escape, goddamn it!

Thing is that I’d beaten Ivy’s freedom record by my second day of Kindergarten. The second Janet took me home with her I’d beaten Ivy’s resistance streak.  If she somehow escaped, she’d be pulling off an even more miraculous feat than anything described on the wildest reaches of MistuhGwiffin: Escape to an adulthood that she’d never had.

Never had a choice. Never had a chance.  Never knew the options. Didn’t fuckin’ have them.
And I was just another in a long list of loser Littles who soothed their ego by ostracizing her as teacher’s pet.

How very typical of me.

Selfishly, my ego tried to preserve itself by harping in the back of my head that Ivy wasn’t technically a Little. Her freakish strength and the strange intuitive ways her brain worked like with the puzzles were leftovers from her Amazonian heritage that leaked past her accidentally inherited stature.  

Did that really not make her a Little, though?  Was she not ‘one of us’ just because neither of her parents weren’t Littles?  The tiny voice that was my conscience told me I was making excuses for myself.  People had been cruel to her and disguised it as kindness, same as with me and for a lot longer.  It was a miracle she was only as mindfucked as she was and could still walk and talk- in two languages no less!  A small mercy from Beouf’s kinder gentler brand of conditioning that nudged one over a line instead of shoved you off a cliff.

“Fuck.”

Janet poked her head through the open door.  “Hey, bud.”

I averted my gaze and stared into Lion’s.  “Hey.”

“You doing okay?”

No. Not at all. Not even close.  “Oh….y’know.”

She stepped in.  “Yeah. I figured.  She crossed the room, bent over, and slipped her fingers past my leakguards.  “Want me to change you?”

“I don’t care.”  I gave Lion a bone shattering squeeze. “I really don’t care.  I don’t.”  

She stepped back and gave me my space. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“I heard what Ivy said on the baby monitor.’

“I know.”

“I understand why you got upset. It’s okay that you’re upset.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Mrs. Zoge said she understands too.”

“Good, I guess.” That one came out with more fire.

“She’s not gonna be mad at you tomorrow…” 

I looked up at her and bored right into her eyes.  That wasn’t the consolation Janet thought it was.

Janet bit her lip nervously. “Can I say why I think you‘re upset?”   

I gave the barest shrug.

“Do you wanna vent? Yell about Mrs. Zoge? Talk about Ivy?” Janet tried to smile.  “Just cry? I can listen.”

“No. I’m good.”

“Do you want advice?”

“No.”  I practically said ‘Fuck off’ with how I said it.

Janet nodded and kept chewing a hole through her lip.  “Mrs. Beouf is coming over in a few minutes.  Do you want to talk to her?”

That got my attention.  “What?!”  

Not again!  I have one bad reaction (okay very bad reaction) to new levels of Amazon crazy and now my behavior is something to be modified again?  My skin sizzled and I started shaking.  I drew my knees up to my chest and put Lion between my face and Janet’s. 

 Panic! I was on the verge of a panic attack!

“I’m sorry!” I lied. “I didn’t mean..!  I just…!” 

“It’s not what you think.” Janet’s voice was measured like a hostage negotiator’s.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.  You didn’t say anything wrong.  Mrs. Beouf just wanted to come by and I said yes.”

I suppressed a scream and fear swang rapidly into frustration. “I thought we were done with this bullshit of talking behind my back and making decisions about me without me there!”  I tried to sound angry, but so much of the fight had left me and refused to come back.  I was really about to collapse into a pile and hide my face in the carpet. “Why are you doing this to me?!”

“I’m not doing anything.” Janet said, choosing each word carefully, stepping around land mines with every syllable.  “Nothing is even being suggested.  Mrs. Beouf is just coming to visit.”

“Are you mad that you didn’t get to baby me since I was five?” I half-shrieked half-rasped. “Jealous? Jealous that I know better?!”

Janet looked like she’d been slapped. She was visibly wrestling with the idea of slapping me back and bending down to give me a hug.  I could see it in her eyes, mouth, and hands.  “You’re trying to hurt my feelings so you can distract me and feel like you’re in control.”

“You’re goddamn right I am!”

We stood there and stared at each other a little while until my breathing slowed down.  It took a good five minutes.  “No one is talking about you behind your back, love.”

“Then why is she coming?” I screeched, my voice breaking again. “Why is Beouf coming?”

“She texted me just before I came to check in on you,” Janet said slowly. “She asked how you were doing, and I said you were having a rough day.  I didn’t say why.  Then she asked if she could come over and I said yes.”

I hugged my knees as tightly to me as I could. My diaper was so swollen that I was still  having trouble making my thighs touch.“Why is she checking up on me?”

“Because she’s your friend. No other reason.”

“Did Zoge tell her?”

“Probably.  That’s not important, but probably.’

I tried to clench even tighter.  “I don’t want her to come. I don’t want her to check up on me.”  I grit my teeth and gnashed at my tongue.  “I just want to be alone for a while.”

“That’s fine,” Janet said. “You have that choice. She’s my friend, too, though. So if you don’t want to talk to her we’ll just hang out in the living room and visit with each other.”  She half bent over and stopped herself from giving me a kiss.  “I’ll give you some more privacy. I’ll tell you when she’s here. Call me if you want anything or just come and find me.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. When she was almost out the door I called out. “Janet!”

She stopped and looked at me. “Hm?”

“Beouf is coming over?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Please change me.”

“Sure.”
**************************************************************************************
The doorbell rang twenty minutes later. Thank goodness I was still dry. Thinking about it would just lead me to overanalyze and then agonize as my bladder slowly refilled, which might inevitably lead me to drop my internal coffee cup. 

Instead I focused on the approaching footsteps. “Clark?”  Janet poked her head in again. I’d resumed my post against the crib. “Mrs. Beouf is here, sweetie.  Would you like to talk to her?”

I gave a last look to Lion and then gently placed him aside so Melony wouldn’t see me cuddling him.  “Yes, please.”

Janet withdrew and in her place came my batshit best friend who just so happened to wipe my bottom from time to time.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” I returned the greeting.

She stepped in and Janet popped her head back in from the hallway. She was a spectator in the operating theater.

“Wanna talk?” she asked gently.

“Nnnn…” My tongue froze.  “Only if you do.”  I looked past her and towards Janet: Hopeful. Curious. Slightly jealous that I was opening up to someone else.

My mentor didn’t even need to see where we were looking. “Want some privacy?”

Mercifully, Janet took the hint.  “I’ll close the door. Let you guys talk. Come find me or call for me,” she pointed to the baby monitor.  She closed the door and her footsteps faded.

I allowed myself a questioning glance at the stupid box by my crib. How were we supposed to have privacy if she was going to be close enough to hear us on a monitor?  That could wait for later.

“Where can I sit?” Beouf asked, looking around.  “Toybox? Lean against the wall? That rocking horse in the corner?”

I gave her a half-hearted shrug.  “Wherever you feel comfortable, I guess.’  At least she was asking permission.

“Mind if I sit next to you?”

I looked to my side and imagined her sitting there, just chilling.  

Yeah. 

Okay.

 “Knock yourself out.”

She let out a groan and lowered herself down to my level, leaning her head back against the crib bars.  “Ow!” she said. “That was a mistake. You should get  a rocking chair or something.”

“Janet doesn’t spend a lot of time in here.”

I wasn’t looking directly at her, but I could almost picture Beouf wanting to ask questions or try to convince me of something. Bedtime stories. Before bed bottles in Janet’s lap. Or I should call her ‘Mommy’.  Wisely, she opted for “Sorry, I don’t have any coffee with me.”

“It’s no big deal,” I monotoned. “I didn’t have time to brew any either.  No biggie.’

My old friend laughed a little at that. “Touche.” A beat, and then she clicked her tongue. The band-aid was about to get ripped off. “So,” she said. “You know about Ivy.”

My nostrils flared.  Just thinking about it made me heat up again.  “Yup.” 

“Including the part where I mispronounced her name so many times that she wanted to change it to Ivy?” The smile in her voice was rueful, but still a smile.

“She said it was only once, but yeah.’

“Any questions?” Beouf asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “What the fuck?”

She let out a “Heh,” and stopped herself from full out laughing. We weren’t at school but I was still a ‘kiddo’ to her now. Children cursing was funny to adults but they didn’t want to encourage it.  “You’re gonna have to be more specific, sir.”

“How could her mother do that to her?” I asked. “Ivy didn’t even have a chance! It’s not fair!”

“No,” Beouf agreed. “No it isn’t. Life isn’t fair. Maturosis isn’t fair.”

Full agreement. We’d be disagreeing on the exact definitions and particulars of that sentence, but I completely agreed with her. “I don’t get it.  I just don’t get it.”

“Ivy was about twenty-one or twenty-two when the Zoge’s moved here and Mrs. Zoge took up the assistant position to get her in,” Beouf said.  “I don’t know if she really had early onset Maturosis or they just kept her as a toddler until it kicked in post puberty like most Littles, but she had more or less reached her Developmental Plateau by then.”

I tugged at the bottom of my eyelids so that the sensitive pink parts stung against the open air.  “Melony, please. Stop.  I really don’t have the energy to listen to your beliefs right now.”

“Okay,” she replied quickly enough. “How about I tell you about Mrs. Zoge’s beliefs?”

I looked to Lion and then back to Beouf.  “Huh?”

“Just follow my train of thought,” Beouf took a deep breath.  “Pretend for a second that Maturosis isn’t real.”

“Done,” I said a bit too quickly for her comfort.

Nevertheless she continued.  “Does that change how the Yamatoans treat Littles?”

“Of course not,” I scoffed. “Yamatoans have been doing what they do forever.”  I had the courtesy and strength of character not to emphasize that Maturosis had only been made up for less than two decades.  I knew my mouth wouldn’t be able to pronounce ‘identified’ or ‘diagnosed’ sans the sarcasm.

Beouf was bobbing her head along. “Yeah, it’s practically their religion. All Littles must be taken care of, Maturosis diagnosis or not.  Mandates from Heaven and all that.”

“Yeah, Ivy included that,” I told her. “A lot.”

“Now,” Beouf said. “Close your eyes and keep imagining.”

“What? No!”  The idea that I needed to close my eyes to imagine something was just condescending enough to irritate.

“Just do it, Clark.”

“I can visualize just fine with my eyes open, thank you.”

“Fine,” Beouf said. “Whatever. Pretend you’re not a Little. Pretend you know nothing about Littles.”  I almost made a crack of saying that I was basically any Amazon ever.  Beouf could read me like a book and gently elbowed me. “No backsass this time, mister.”

“I didn’t…” I muttered and settled for mouthing “yet.”

“Now pretend you’re born in Yamatoa.”

“Where the only time I’d see Littles is if they were in diapers,” I droned on. “I get it.”

Melony and I looked at each other. “Do you?  Did you have any Amazon friends growing up? What did your parents teach you about people taller than you?”  She’d probably heard enough from the Littles in her class over the years.

My upper lip curled. “You’re not ‘both sides’-ing this thing.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’m saying people’s upbringing can really mess them up if it’s the wrong one.  Ivy and her parents and her grandparents and on and on all grew up on this island with next to no contact with the rest of the world. They’d never dreamed of a Little being able to function as an adult, even temporarily.”  A beat. “What would you have been like if we had never worked together?”

Free. Married. Working. Untraumatized.  I swatted those intrusive thoughts away. Those did me no good.

“What would you have been like if you’d never met me?” I threw the question back at her.

Mel answered without hesitation. “Unlucky,” she said. “Poorer in spirit. A few less gray hairs to dye, but less happy and not knowing it.”

I fell sideways and let my head hit her lap..  “Yeah,” I said. “I get it. Zoge didn’t know any better.  We’ve been over this. When she pulled back my pants last year, remember?” 

“I remember,” Beouf said, patting me on the shoulder. “Did you know about the Heaven stuff? Those beliefs?  She was practically committing blasphemy when she apologized to you the way she did.” 

“Yeah, I pieced that out pretty quick.”  My hand went up in the air and I flapped my fingers and thumb together like a sock puppet.  “And other than that one time, and the time she offered to carry me she was very civil to me and restrained. Yada-yada-yada.”

“You’re still holding onto that grudge? From ten years ago?”

“Yup.” 

The conversation started to be steered a different way. “Was Ivy clear why they moved when she told you?”

“Yeah,” I said. I continued flapping my hand like the most uninspired and out of sync Muffet. “New law. Mandatory cartoons. The bad kind.”

“Mmmhmm.’  Beouf brushed some of my own hair out of my eyes that had drooped over. “But if Maturosis doesn’t exist and she just wanted to make Ivy stay a baby anyways, why not just make her watch the cartoons?  Why didn’t she start Ivy watching them right out of Kindergarten?”

I huffed and pushed myself back up to my sitting position. “Because she really thought Ivy was a baby.” 

“And…?” Beouf prodded me. “What else? You’re smart, big boy.”

“And real babies don’t need hypnotic conditioning to make them act like babies. They just do it naturally.”  I climbed to my bare feet and dug my toes in the carpet out of anxiety.  “So Zoge did the brave thing and ventured out into the wide scary world and got everything she ever wanted.”

Beouf remained seated beside me.“Come on, Clark,” she said, sounding sad. 

“What?” I asked. “You said it yourself. It’s very likely Ivy didn’t have early onset Maturosis.  Even by your standards she was probably neglected or abused for years. Abuse coming from a sincerely and deeply held belief is still abuse, Mel”  I gripped onto the crib bars to stop myself from pacing.  “If what Zoge did her daughter is okay, why not just do it to all Littles? Catch us wherever you find us, dress us up like this, and wait for Maturosis to kick in?  Why not if it’s gonna probably happen anyway?”

“That still happens,” she admitted. “Happens less than it used to since doctors started identifying and diagnosing Matur-”

“Good for you and your conscience,” I interrupted her.

“Oooooooooof,” Melony exhaled. “You are hurtin’ extra hard about this today.”

“Yeah,” I said a little louder than we’d been talking. “I am.”

“Why?  Why does Ivy bother you so much?  We’ve got other kids in class who’ve lost a lot, too.”

“Because she never had anything. She never got what I did. Or what Billy or Annie or anybody else at school did.  She never got a life outside of…of…” I waved my arm indicating the nursery. “This!”

My friend copied my gesture, “And you think all of…this…invalidates everything that came before it. And ‘cause Ivy never got some version of the Independent Adult Little lifestyle that makes it worse; puts her in the negatives instead of just canceling it out.”

“Kinda,” I admitted. “Pretty much.”

Beouf tapped her chin in thought for a second and slid her glasses back up her nose. “Question: Keep pretending Maturosis isn’t real.”

Not pretending.  “Uh-huh.”

“What would have happened to Ivy if Mrs. Zoge had just decided to stay in Yamatoa?”

I answered immediately. “Doll. Full doll. Anywhere from being rewritten as a person so that the real Ivy functionally never existed, or full brain death so she’s a drooling blob, or having so many triggers that she loses her free will, or she’s trapped in her own body. Basically what New Beginnings does that nobody wants to admit to.”

“Mmmmmmhmmm…”

“Basically the same thing that would’ve happened to me,” I heard myself say. “If…if…”

Janet’s words that day screamed back into my conscious thought with a new weight: “Yes!  I’ll Adopt him.  He’s mine. I want him.  He’s mine!  Please!”

“If she hadn’t…” I was starting to shake again.

“Can I give you a hug?” Beouf asked.

“Yes please.”  

An Amazonian dragged me into her lap and she squeezed me like I was her Lion, except it didn’t hurt. “Feel better?”

“Not really,” I said. “It’s still not fair.  Ivy shouldn’t have ended up like this.”

“Ended up?” I heard Beouf laugh. “Her life isn’t over buddy.  And neither is yours.”  She ruffled my hair and turned me around so that I was sitting in her lap and facing the same direction as her.  “It’s just different from what any of us expected it to be.  Y’all aren’t dead.”

The grim pallor of my mood wasn’t ready to part ways with me.  Being happy, or at least forgiving felt like losing.  Even giving an ‘it’s complicated’ pass felt like less than a draw.  “How do you figure?”

“Because a very smart Little boy that I’m friends with reminded me that my students are not the same thing as their diagnoses.”  Her voice shot up nearly an octave. The top of my head was under her chin and I could still hear the sappy near condescending smile.  Was she cosetting me or teasing me?  Maybe both?

I wriggled out of her grasp and scrambled back to my feet.  She wasn’t trying to restrain me so I managed it.  “It still sucks for her,” I said.  “Do you have any idea how often people mess with her?”

Beouf crossed her arms and shot me a teacher glare that made the bare handful of hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.  “Really? Really, Clark? Do I?”

My cheeks flushed with shame. “Point taken,” I said. “But even if I stopped, it was happening before me.”

Beouf stood up and smoothed out her clothes. “Good thing you two get to stay together.”

My mouth went dry.  Was this a trap?  “Huh?”

“Ivy’s had some friends over the years, but they always graduate. Now that you know more, maybe you can be her friend.”

“How is that gonna stop literally everybody else in class?” I asked.

Beouf smiled softly down at me.  “Only child?”

“Both times,” I joked.

She didn’t laugh, but neither did she scowl or scoff.  “I don’t wanna assign labels or imply relationships that aren’t there, bud, but Mommies and Daddies aren’t the only ones who protect their Little ones.”  

“Hm?”

“Family is family,” Melony told me. “Doesn’t matter where your plateau is.  Doesn’t matter who’s functionally the older sibling and who’s the younger one. Someone comes for my sister, I’m stepping up.”

“Ivy is nowhere near my sister,” I said.

“Yeah, but it sounds more powerful talking about family.”

“You could have just said something about right is right and wrong is wrong,” I grumbled.

She scooped me up and placed me on her hip.  “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t get to say it.” She laughed at her own joke while I pouted.  “Good talk?”

“Good talk,” I said.  “Ready to go see my Mommy?”

Beouf pointed to the baby monitor.  “I think she’s on her way, bubba. Talk’s over.”  The light was blinking again. “Do you wanna tell her what we talked about or not?”

“What do you mean?” I thumbed over towards the monitor. “She’s probably been listening the whole time.”  Frankly, I was just glad she wasn’t staring at us or adding in extra comments during awkward silences.

“Nope,” Mel said.  “You just turned it on.”

“Turned? It? On?” I  suddenly felt like I was being interrogated after downing a tall glass of high proof moonshine with just enough lemonade to mask most of the taste.

The door squeaked open and Janet came in.  “Hey guys. Did you have a good talk?’  She reached over and took me from Beouf.

“Janet Grange!” Beouf said, like she was scolding a puppy dog.  “Did you read the baby monitor instructions at all before you set it up?”

Janet looked just as confused as I.  “What?  What are you talking about? Is it broken? Did it get switched again?”

Beouf snatched it up and pressed a button on top.  The light stopped blinking.  “This is a King Fisher, Janet!  It’s language activated to give the kid some privacy and to encourage them to call for their Mommy or Daddy when they need something!”

The light started blinking again and Beouf pressed the button to turn it off.

“This is both a great safety tool, and a great educational tool,” Skinner had promised.

“Yeah,” Janet said, sounding baffled that this was even being discussed. “I know. Why what’s up?’

“Know what?” I asked. I had no reason to but I kept looking around. 

“Janet!” Beouf smacked her head. “Don’t tell me…” she gestured to me.  “Did you forget to tell him?!”

Janet’s eyes darted around wildly trying to remember.  “Did I?’ she asked me.

“Did you what?”

“Clark,” Beouf said, holding up the monitor.  “Say the M-word that she likes you to call her.”

“Mommy?”  I said.  

“That’s right,” she said. “Now it’s recording, and wherever your Mommy has the other end, she’d be able to hear it.”  The faint echoes of Beouf’s voice coming from the living room put truth to it.  “Before you said ‘Mommy’, it was off. Like this.”  She pressed the button and the light stopped blinking.  “That way if you needed to cry or self soothe or just snored a lot, you could have that privacy without waking her up; and if you woke up in the middle of the night and needed a cuddle or a bottle or a diaper change you could just call out to her.”

“I could what?!” I said.

Melony started cackling and doubling over in laughter.  ‘Holy crud! What?! Really?”  She fell to the floor clutching her sides.  “Janet!  Rookie mistake! Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I forgot! That was a really stressful day!” Janet’s face went rose petal pink. “You’ve used it before,” she said to me.  “I thought you knew.’

“When?!” I demanded to know.

“When…?” Her face grimaced searching for polite phrasing. “Um…I wanna say it was last week…? A night or two before you used your rash gel. The green kind…”

The green kind? The masturbation goop?!  That was right after I’d had that weird sex dream turned nightmare and was trying to relieve some tension to get back to sleep. The light had been blinking then, too.  And Janet had taken out the monitor entirely when she’d squirted the green stuff down my crotch.

When would I have said ‘Mommy’?  

Oh no!

“Janet! I was talking in my sleep!”

“You were?!”  Janet opened her mouth, and then her eyes went wide and sorrowful.  “Oh no! Baby! I’m sorry! I thought you’ve been sleeping fine all these nights and you probably thought I’ve been ignoring you this whole time!  I am so sorry!” She started planting kisses on my cheeks like they were money trees. “So, so, sorry!”

I didn’t resist or blanch away from the unasked for affection.  I was too deep in the realization that none of my spiteful sleep deprived declarations of hate had ever made it to her ears.  I’d been keeping myself up for nothing.  Why couldn’t I tell her I hated her to her face, then?

“Talking in his sleep!” Beouf continued to howl.  “Oh my gosh! That’s too funny!” She pounded the floor.  “We’ve probably used it more than he has!”

“Hold on!” Janet realized. “You talk in your sleep?”

“I guess,” I said.

The biggest, dopiest smile spread on Janet’s lips.  “You’ve been calling me ‘Mommy’ in your dreams?”