kerry

What I like about this is the voice: she really sounds like someone about 17 years old with the attention issues and the short ¶s and all. Nice work there.

I was trying to be a little modest... Besides, once again I shared that honor with you! :-)

Some of you may have seen this list already, but I received a request to start a thread with it, hoping others will add their favorites as well. The only rule? Stories must be complete. Partial stories just have to wait. This list is not even a little bit complete, and it obviously reflects my personal tastes, but it is somewhere to begin. There were a few stories that I could not find at this moment; these do not have links. Lily the Liar (Elibean) The Trying Policy (Mr Sea Otter) The Week I Entered Their World (ludib) Wishes and Consequences (10after2) Dante’s Infanzia (Personalias) The Surrogate Baby (WriteAndLeft) Life and Death Choices Made Casually (WriteAndLeft) My Real Country Family (CSFox) Committed (Ormseinbani) French Whines (CSFox) Skye’s the Limit (Elizabeth) A Trip to the Fair (Teekabell) Cultural Differences (Teekabell) R.O.O.M. (Teekabell) In For a Penni (Elizabeth) The Woes of Maddison Page (diapersnpaws) Because of Morgan (Mina Taylor) Kit and Kenzie (Sophie & Pudding) Little Luzy ˇ (Sophie & Pudding) Raquel’s Only Wish / Raquel's Wish Adventures in Timecatting Resurrection Stories We Tell The Ryan and Dorie Story Of Leopards and Their Spots (Cute-Kitten and Personalias) Tricky Treats (Cute-Kitten) Alisa's Adventures in the Diaper Dimension (Princess Pottypants) Chasing Emily (InKuHim) Redeeming Clara (WriteAndLeft) Magic Diapers (Lizzy) I will also include, immodestly, two of my own pieces, just because I like them a lot: It Takes a Village (Kerry) Stranger on a Train (Kerry) There are several other DD stories I like, especially those written by bbykimmy; however, I sometimes have trouble with the level of sadism prevalent in such tales, so I have not included them. How about it, folks? What are your favorites? Link them if you can. Maybe you can help me recall some of my own missing favs!

This story was written for a Valentine's Day story contest. Cupid's Bow It’s February again and they are everywhere.No matter where I turn, no matter how hard I try to avoid them, in this month, at least in this gods-forsaken country, the images seem to multiply of their own accord. I walk into a shopping mall and there they are. I turn on the television and, more than likely, they will be in some local car dealer’s commercial. I see them on billboards, on greeting cards, on cute little mugs, on men’s ties. I see them on posters, on facebook, in the Sunday comics. I see them wherever I look because—at least for the first half of this month—they are utterly ubiquitous. People think they are adorable: little baby Cupids flying about wearing nothing but a diaper, wielding the bow, looking to sting someone with the arrow of love. They don’t understand; they think they are just cute images. But every time I see them, all I can think of is my own shame. If anyone really knew me, I’d probably go into hiding around Valentine’s Day. But such is my state these days, even more than the rest of us, that I can hide in plain sight. Everyone seems to love Cupid, but no one knows Eros. It’s both a blessing and a curse, this lack of memory. But in February, at least, I’ll take it. Far better that no one knows me than a million people seek me out for favors, all expecting me to look like...that. When people did know me, back when they venerated Mom and Dad and the rest of them, they knew better. They understood the danger, the risk of asking us for favors. Oh they still did so, but they were not anywhere near as reckless as the masses of people hoping for an arrow from that little cherub are today. And back then, when we walked among them openly, the artists knew me as well. Look at any of the images from back then: Roman or Greek, it didn’t matter; I was portrayed as I actually was, a slender youth, beautiful of course—I couldn’t be Mom’s son and not be beautiful—winged, and usually naked. Back then, artists loved the body and painted or sculpted it with care and precision. And since our bodies looked like theirs, at least to them, they found themselves fascinated by our perfection. It was silly, of course: we were perfect because we were gods, but also because our visages reflected what they wanted and expected from us. And from Venus and Eros—I have always liked the Greek version of my name more—they expected perfection, and besides: the perfection of my naked body was a reflection of the perfection of Love.As time went on, though, we realized that our era in the limelight was at an end. We’d made it through two great civilizations, but both had fallen, and in the new era no one really remembered us. You can see it in the art. After the Great Fall, there was, for all intents and purposes, no art whatsoever; there was no one to commission it. And when, finally, after a thousand years, art returned to the world, well, we’d been gone so long; no one really knew us. I mean it shouldn’t have been unexpected: they couldn’t even get the image of the god they did believe in right. I met him once when he walked the earth; he was a short, swarthy man with dark, curly hair, typical of that time and place, yet their art depicted him as tall, light-skinned and angelic, with long, straight hair hanging freely. If they couldn’t get him right, we had no chance at all.So I shouldn’t have been surprised when the Renaissance artists started showing me as a child. I was known for being the son of Venus and Mars, after all, and they perhaps felt the need to show that I was younger. But their cherubic imagery still left me at least with some dignity: naked, my chubby, child self was still beautiful, and those artists painted me with great care to make me so. Not like these modern artists, who tend to show me only in cartoons, and then cover up my glorious god’s body in tunics or in a diaper. Where is the respect? I’m no longer perfection; I’m shown as a fat little babe playing with arrows. If I were Bacchus it would drive me to drink. Not that he ever really needed an excuse.But the thing that really makes me detest those images isn’t just their cheap cartoonishness. It’s the fact that it’s all my own stupid fault. In fairness, how could I have known? I ask myself that a lot, but it doesn’t change the facts, and the facts show that I made myself into the model for these ubiquitous portraits.You have to understand: we had long, long since retreated to Mt. Olympus, hoping there might come another time when the people would want us. (It still might happen: the culture today seems to have a not-unhealthy obsession with my Norse cousins, after all. It’s a short jump from Thor and Asgard to Apollo and Olympus.) Every once in a while, though, some of us would venture out among them, disguising ourselves as we always had. For me (and for Hermes too, though his problem was his feet), this always presented the need to hide my wings. Fortunately, as I am a god, that never was too much of an issue, and anyway humans tend to ignore completely that which they cannot comprehend. I could have unwrapped my wings in plain sight and it’s possible no one would have even noticed. (Not today, of course: I’d be all over YouTube.)After the Renaissance, I had grown a real fascination for my own childhood. Seeing myself depicted that way sparked something within me, and I needed to explore it. My lovely Psyche was more than happy to help, and our relationship was all the better for it. Nothing like a little bit of role-playing to spice up a two thousand year old marriage. And truth be told, we both really found it to be joyful: getting in touch with my child self after two millennia was both enjoyable and rather profound. And I liked it so much that it became a regular aspect of our lovemaking. But something changed near the end of the 19th Century.Diapers had been part of a baby’s routine since the 17th Century, but it wasn’t until the late 19th that they assumed the form we think of as traditional: the sheets of white cloth secured by large safety pins. Some time in there, some artists began putting diapers on my images, most likely out of a prudish Victorian desire to cover up the nakedness that centuries of people had found beautiful. Whatever the reason, when I started seeing them, I knew I had to add that element to our age play games. At first, Psyche was against it; she’d always been a purist. But I wore her down. She finally agreed, and one day near the turn of the 20th Century, as I wore the body I’d had as a small child, she put me into the first diaper I’d ever worn. It was a revelation: all of that soft material padding me down there. Psyche found the feeling of it next to her skin arousing, and (given the era) loved the fact that, for a change, I was the one trapped beneath excess layers of clothing. She had always enjoyed the age play, but it was clear to both of us that something between us changed when my loins were swaddled in this new way. Suddenly she seemed to take a more dominant role in our lovemaking as well as in the game, as if I were really the little boy I appeared to be. And it was at this point that my life was altered abruptly by the Fates: where we’d always been private in our “human” existence, they decreed that we’d be discovered.It was a not atypical London summer day: the morning sun had burned off the fog and all was lovely and warm. While we pretended to be human, we lived in a modest flat near Hyde Park: nothing so fancy as it would be noticeable, but comfortable nonetheless. We were immortal beings, after all, and I was a god: we were not about to live in squalor as so many Londoners did at the time. So we took this flat and lived quietly, venturing out only on occasion. This was one such occasion. Psyche decided that she wanted to take a walk in the park. A bit of mischief was in me, so I decided to accompany her as my child self. She insisted that, if I did that, she should diaper me and act as my mother or nanny. I felt myself become aroused at the suggestion; this kind of game always made her want me, and by this time I could become aroused just by thinking about the joys that would await us in bed upon our return.So we did as she suggested: she diapered me and was about to get me into some short pants and a child’s jacket when her eyes suddenly lit up. “What if you were a girl this time?” she asked.“What?”She smiled that sexy smile I couldn’t resist and repeated, “What if you were a girl this time? We’ve been playing this forever, but I’ve never gotten to take care of a little girl, and their clothes are so much more adorable than boys’ clothes in this era.”She was right, of course: almost all boys wore variations of the same theme: a child’s school uniform. Shorts, high socks, shirt, jacket. Maybe a cap. Girls, on the other hand, though they were always in dresses, were thoroughly individual.“So you want me to change my body to female?” I asked. It had never in all of these years occurred to me to do so, but I knew I could with no real problem. And gender was never really an issue to the gods.She looked pensive. “Truth be told, it’s the clothing I’m interested in. Whether you are physically a girl or a boy matters a lot less.”Still, if I were going to assent to this, and there was no doubt about that—I’d do absolutely anything for her—I thought I might as well go all the way. So I appeared in front of my love as a small girl, and she actually squealed with delight upon seeing me that way.“Oh, Darling!” she said. “We should have done this eons ago: you are absolutely precious this way.”I grew warm knowing that she was feeling such pleasure, so I went along with anything she asked. I gave myself a pretty yellow dress and some girls’ shoes and white knee socks. Psyche enjoyed playing with my hair, brushing it out and tying it with a ribbon. When she was sure she had it right, she allowed me to stand in front of the mirror. There before me stood a small Victorian girl, her dress poofy enough to hide the fact that, though a bit too old for them, she was wearing a diaper underneath. I lifted the skirt and looked at the odd garment that babies and young children used as a portable chamber pot. As I was looking at myself, Psyche approached with something new: a pair of short, woolen underwear.“What’s that for?” I asked her.“To put on over the diaper, Silly,” she said, “so it won’t leak.”Leak. As if I intended to use the thing. She slipped the tight woolen pants up my legs and over the diaper. “That’s better,” she said, patting me on my padded behind before lowering the skirt again and covering the infantile garment. “Time to go, Cutie.”A new pet name, too, I thought. At least she had derived it from one of my real names. “So I’m Cutie? And who are you?”She smiled. “Mommy, of course. But I’ll go by the name Isabella. And your real name will be Penelope.”Penelope. Wife of Ulysses. Signifies faithfulness. “Sending me a message, Mommy?” I asked playfully.She laughed. “I know you’ll never be unfaithful to me.” Then she winked. “Especially in that disguise.”She was certainly right about that. The only way I could be unfaithful today would be to run away from her, and no sooner had I conceived that thought than it sounded like a fun addition to the game.Of course I didn’t tell her. It would have spoiled things if she had known my plan. So off we went, walking toward the park. She held my hand so I would not “get lost”; I was seriously enjoying this. It was always great when she came up with new flavors for our games. She sang to me softly as we were walking, as if keeping a real child calm and content. When we got to the park, she sat down on a bench and told me to “play” with some of the “other” little girls, who were jumping rope a short distance away. I was surprised at this; we’d never involved others in our games before. But when I mentioned this she just said, “I’m the mother here; you go play like a good girl.”When I got into the game, I kept looking across at Psyche. Truth be told it almost made me miss a couple of jumps, but I am a god; I was fine. As I jumped, though, I kept thinking about how my dress was flying up revealing my petticoats, and I worried about it also revealing what lay beneath the petticoats. I looked back at the bench; Psyche was talking to another woman. From the animated way they spoke and pointed over to us, it was clear this young woman was a mother herself and her daughter was one of the girls I was with. How far was Psyche going to take the game today? We had long since crossed beyond anything we’d ever experienced, and if I judged correctly it was just as exciting for her as it was for me.The other girls grew tired of the rope-jumping after awhile, and we drifted apart until I was left with only one blonde-haired girl to talk to. Her name was Cynthia, and her mother was indeed the woman with my Psyche. After a few more minutes, though, the “parents” called us to come back to the bench. Cynthia dutifully obeyed, but I hesitated. If I were going to run, this was the time. So when Psyche called me a second time, I giggled, turned, and started running.Ordinarily there would not be much chance of Psyche catching me if we were racing, especially if I had a head start, but I had these very small legs and was further hampered by the thick diaper. I heard her calling, but I kept running and laughing. Finally, she caught up to me and stopped me.I whirled around to face her, my cheeks puffy and surely red from the running. I wanted to share the great joke with her, to hear her laughter echoing my own. But as soon as I turned I knew something was wrong. “How could you do that?” she demanded.“Do what?” I asked. “I was just running. It’s not as if I unfolded my wings.”She frowned. “You couldn’t have embarrassed me more had you done that.”Embarrassed? I looked back toward the bench, and the other woman was standing there with Cynthia. She pointed at me and shook her head. Glancing around, I realized there were several others in the park who had witnessed my little escapade. “Do you even understand being out in human society anymore?” she asked sharply under her breath, then added, more loudly, “Don’t you know how to behave yourself?”Suddenly I understood: I had seemed an unruly child and she was feeling embarrassed by my antics around these mortal women. I tried to wriggle out of her grasp to apologize, but she held me firmly. “I can’t believe you acted that way,” she said. Suddenly I felt her open hand crashing down on my rear end. Through the dress and petticoats and diapers, I could hardly be expected to feel any pain, but the shock sent waves through me and I responded as any young girl might have: I yelled.“No!” I yelled. “Don’t spank me! I’m sorry!”It was as much for the onlookers as for myself, I acknowledge, but I didn’t anticipate what happened next. She grabbed hold of me, lifted me up, and carried me to the nearest bench. With a swiftness I had hardly ever seen in her, she flipped me over, lifted the dress, and started raining blows to my behind. Without the layers of material, her hand actually hurt this time. And what’s worse: the shock of it all caused my little girl’s bladder to release, flooding my shamefully exposed diaper. By this time I was crying for real. She clearly knew what I had done, but kept spanking anyway until she figured I had had enough…or maybe until she remembered that this was supposed to be a game between us, not reality.She lifted me off of her knee and set me in front of her. Smoothing my dress and using her handkerchief to dab my tears, she spoke gently in words only I could hear: “If we are out in public like this, you have to act like a proper little girl. Goodness knows if Millicent back there will even allow Cynthia to play with you anymore.”Between my sobs, I spoke up. “I just...thought it would be...funny.”She shook her head. “Maybe if we were alone it would have been. But you could have ruined everything for us; can’t you see that? If we are to remain here in London, we need to be vigilant not to do things that call undue attention to us.”I nodded; she was right. And I was the one who had volunteered to be the little girl here; I had to play the game fully. Suddenly something else she said sneaked into my brain. “What do you mean, allow Cynthia to play with me again?”She straightened my bow, ignoring me. “I dressed you as a sweet, adorable girl and you go and act like a brat.”I tried to pull away but she swatted my behind again. “Enough of that!” she said. “Or we’ll never be able to come back.”“Come back?”She smiled slyly. “I just made a date for tomorrow to meet with Millicent back here. You’ll get more time to play with Cynthia.”Over on the bench, I could see Cynthia and her mother talking. Now I knew what they were talking about. I turned to Psyche. “You want me to play this role again?”Her eyes answered me before she did. “I don’t know why, my love, but something about you as Penelope makes me the happiest I’ve ever been.”It wasn’t difficult to figure out why. Two thousand years without a child and suddenly I’m letting her experience motherhood, in a way. And I too was loving it: the freedom of being a little girl was exhilarating. I hadn’t had that much joy in running since a foot race with Hermès a millennium ago. (He won, of course, but somehow I made it close, and it felt heavenly.) “If I agree to this,” I told her, “you can’t discipline me like that again.”She shook her head. “If you act in a way that is naughty, I will have to in order to maintain the facade.”So it was up to me, I thought. I could handle that. And anyway—though I’d never acknowledge it to her—there was something about the whole thing I had enjoyed. I’m a god; no one had ever done anything like that to me before. I found it somewhat...exciting. We had crossed the distance back to the bench by this point, and Cynthia ran up to me. “Mommy says we can play again tomorrow,” she told me.I giggled. “That will be fun,” I told her. As Psyche and Millicent made their plans, we talked about the doll she would bring. I told her I’d bring one of mine as well. It wouldn’t be hard to make a doll. Finally, Millicent and Cynthia said goodbye and left us.“Now, little girl,” Psyche said to me, “we need to do something about that diaper.”If there had been any doubt that she knew of my disgrace, that removed it. “Let’s get you home,” she said.I smiled. “You know, I can just will it to be clean.”“I know that,” she said. “I also know you haven’t. Something in you clearly wants me to change it.”She was right. I hadn’t thought about why I’d allowed it to remain wet, but of course she was right: there was still more of the game to play. She took my hand once more and we headed back to our flat.Once we were back across our threshold, she wasted no time in whisking me over to our bed, laying me down, and (with my petticoats lifted high) pulling those woolen pants down to reveal my soaked diaper. “You know, I didn’t expect you to actually use this thing” she told me as she unpinned it and cleaned me off with a wet washcloth. “But since you have...are you suggesting that you enjoy this game as much as I do?”I didn’t have to answer her; my smile said it all. “Let’s just keep playing for awhile,” she said.“Not right yet,” I said, and I allowed myself to change back into my normal self. Her hands were still moving the washcloth around, but now their target was the nether regions of a beautiful young man who was most definitely aroused by her actions. I pulled her down on top of me, and we enjoyed each other’s bodies for the rest of the afternoon more than we had in a long time.Lying there afterwards, spent of my energy and just holding Psyche in my arms, I contemplated all that had occurred during the day and I knew that we would keep playing this game. There was no way I was going to give this raw emotion up. So the next day we found ourselves back in the park, once more as Isabella and her little girl. Cynthia and I played with the dolls we had brought—some elaborate invention about a shopping trip to Harrods; I let her lead since I had no clue how to act this age or this gender, but it was actually fun. Meanwhile the “grownups” chatted, taking a cue from us and discussing their last excursions to the great store. Millicent was surprised to discover that we had never been there for cream tea, and she insisted that we accompany her the next day. So Penelope had another date to be with Cynthia. As we played, I felt the internal cramp that suggested my bladder was again full. Knowing that I had no other option, I just let it go in the diaper. I considered cleaning myself, but it had seemed yesterday that Psyche really liked that part of the game, so I just left it wet. I was surprised though when she called me over to the bench, lifted my petticoats and stuck a finger beneath the woolen pants.“You’re wet,” she announced, and I found myself utterly embarrassed: I didn’t know she’d do something like that in public. “She’s still not trained?” Millicent asked. Psyche shook her head. “No, her body is slow. I’d better change this.”Not knowing where she was going with this, I was surprised to find her unpinning the diaper right there. She reached into the oversized handbag she’d carried with her and removed a damp rag, which she used to wipe me down. Then she pulled out another diaper and put it on me, tugged up my woolen pants, smoothed my dress, and swatted me on the rear to send me back to play.Cynthia, who had seen it all, said, “You still wear a diaper?” Her voice sounded different, as if she had decided that she was more mature than I was because she didn’t.It took no acting on my part to look sheepish. “Yes,” I admitted. “Then we need to play house instead,” she said. “You can be the baby.”For the next hour or so, our dolls were aunts come to visit and Cynthia was my “mother.” She was actually a little bigger than I was, so it didn’t take a lot for her to sit me on her knees and bounce me up and down. It was an enjoyable sensation, but all of the bouncing loosened my tiny bladder once more.She turned to Psyche. “I think she’s wet again,” she said.Psyche gave me a look that suggested she thought I was doing this on purpose. “Well,” she said, “I don’t have another diaper for her, so she’ll just have to wait until we get home.”Cynthia decided that it was the “baby’s” bedtime, so I found myself lying on the grass at her feet while she sang a lullaby. Somehow, the hushed tones and soft grass lulled me, and I actually fell asleep.I awakened back in our flat.“How did we get here?” I asked, groggily.Psyche laughed. “You really were out cold. I carried you back, changed you, and you’ve been sleeping since.”I felt my diaper; it was soaked. “You said you changed me?”She nodded. “You’re not wet again?”It was confusing. Somehow “Penelope” had no control whatsoever over her bladder. It wasn’t a condition I had consciously given her. I morphed back into myself and removed the wet garment.“Maybe we’d better put a hold on this game until I can figure out why this is happening,” I suggested, but she was having none of it. “I’ve finally found another woman to have a friendship with,” she said. “I haven’t had one since the Tudor era.”“Whose fault is that? You haven’t tried to find one since then.”She frowned. “Well it was hard watching poor Anne end that way. She didn’t deserve it. All she did was love him and give him a child.”“I know, I know,” I said. Memories of masquerades in the palace mixed with that last, horrible, bloody moment, making me wince. “Well then you know why this is important to me,” she said, and I did. Thus “Isabella and Penelope” not only joined Millicent and Cynthia for tea at Harrods, but became regular visitors to the park. Sometimes we met them there; other times Psyche would have me join with the “other girls” in whatever games they were playing. I got very, very good at hopscotch. But a strange thing was occurring: it seemed that all of this playtime as the nearly incontinent Penelope was actually affecting my own bladder as well, and I was finding it harder to control my needs even as a grown Eros. Psyche said that maybe I needed to wear diapers all the time; it was a jest at first, but soon it grew into a reality. I started wearing them even as an adult, and even then she insisted on changing them. Quickly, the beribboned Penelope was not the only one of our unusual household whom Psyche was mothering. I was not worried about all of this. I was a god; I understood what Freud was writing about in Austria and knew that this was all some subconscious desire on my part to relive that lost childhood. And since Psyche was more than willing to help, we played more and more. Gradually, I was spending so much time as the little girl that it was affecting my other duties.Although people didn’t believe in us gods anymore, somehow I was one of the only ones that they still prayed to. I guess there is always a desire for love in everyone’s lives, and my gold-tipped arrows always got a great workout. Occasionally, someone would even deserve a lead-tipped one, but by this time I reserved these for the worst stalkers and sexual offenders. I had most recently used one in 1888 in Whitechapel on a doctor who had been killing prostitutes there. His heart was particularly black and he only became aroused by the kind of power he knew he could exhibit in dark alleys. I decided that I would punish him by giving him an enormous fear of women in general; hence the lead arrow. I was still called often though for my gold arrows, but even there I needed to be careful since the humans were not. Sometimes the love they engendered was quite erotic; sometimes it was even illegal. On at least one occasion, it cost a man his life. That was a playwright who wished for a certain young man he lusted after to love him. When they were caught, the playwright was prosecuted for sodomy and died in prison. Even the good arrow could be harmful. But most of the time it was what it had always been: an antidote to unrequited love. And those who addressed me properly in prayer deserved to be helped from this painful condition.But now I found myself not even listening to the prayers because as Penelope I was simply having too much fun. And it didn’t hurt that Psyche was so aroused by her maternal instincts: our relations had improved in both frequency and power. I began thinking that I would just keep playing the game forever, but the Fates had another thing in mind: Cynthia was growing older and needed other stimuli in her life. Finally, there came a time when she and her mother failed to come to the park, and that was the beginning of the end.But when I returned at last to granting prayers, I found myself quite as incontinent as the little child I’d been playing. I tried willing my bladder to work properly, but it still did not; something was affecting my power to make that change. Still, I could not ignore the prayers any longer, so I decided to acquiesce to the artwork that had Cupid painted in a diaper. Thus I did my job as a cherub, and when I got home I became Penelope and Psyche was a Mommy again. Gradually, my bladder control returned and I no longer required the diapers. By then though, I had discovered that the human world now almost uniformly saw me in that unfortunate juvenile state, and I was stuck with it. When I tried to do my work as myself, I found that people didn’t accept me as Eros: their mental image of the diapered cherub overrode the reality of a grown winged archer right in front of them. Eventually, I just gave in and, thoroughly embarrassed, appeared as they expected. I could have retired like most of my Olympian friends, but unlike them, I was still revered. So instead I swallowed my pride and did what I needed to do. There was at least one reward: my sexual experiences with Psyche grew even stronger; she loved being a mommy so much that, after an afternoon spent as a child, I could pretty much count on some very adult lovemaking. But I had forever destroyed, or at least altered, the view of who I was. No longer the erotically beautiful youth, I was now a babe in diapers. And that’s how things remained, though I never did get used to being seen that way by others besides me and Psyche. And now those images are everywhere. This ridiculous holiday celebrating love (why don’t they celebrate that every day?) has turned baby Cupid into big business. No one even knows the older version anymore; he is just...gone. And it is all because of my own silly game. Gradually I lost all need or desire to return to the form I’d used for centuries other than for relations with Psyche. But as the 20th Century wore on, even that changed: she added new features to the game in our new apartment in Chicago: more accoutrements of the tiny child that would fill out a modern nursery. And she became known as the young widow with a child. (That’s what she told everyone, and I was beginning to think it was not incorrect: in my normal form, Eros seemed to have ceased to exist.) I once was Eros, the beautiful son of Venus and Mars. Now I live my life as Penelope and have even given up my duties as Cupid. By this point, even the adult pleasures of lovemaking have slipped away. Psyche just wants to be a mommy, and I’ve almost forgotten what it was like to be a man. I’ve lived permanently as a child for over half a century now, having lost faith in the adult world after two World Wars. Still, every year around Valentine’s Day, I get nostalgic and feel ashamed that I’ve let the world down. But love still exists without me; it finds a way even though the only bow I have these days is the ribbon in my hair.

The disclaimer is just on "Little Luzy"...for obvious reasons. :-) I totally agree about Selphie's story. I'll be sure to put it on the list when it is finished. :-)

I have updated and added: Of Leopards and Their Spots (Cute-Kitten and Personalias) Bad Moon Rising (Cute-Kitten) Alisa's Adventures in the Diaper Dimension (Princess PottyPants) Chasing Emily (InKuHim) and Redeeming Clara (WriteandLeft)

Sure. I have not updated in in about a year and probably should. (Cute-Kitten by herself has about three stories I'd like to add.) But anyway it will give you an idea of my taste if nothing else. :-) Here it is: Lily the Liar (Elibean) The Trying Policy (Mr Sea Otter)The Week I Entered Their World (ludib)Wishes and Consequences (10after2)Dante’s Infanzia (Personalias)The Surrogate Baby (WriteAndLeft)Life and Death Choices Made Casually (WriteAndLeft) Nothing But a Country Girl (CSFox) French Whines (CSFox) Skye’s the Limit (Elizabeth)A Trip to the Fair (Teekabell)Cultural Differences (Teekabell)R.O.O.M. (Teekabell)In For a Penni (Elizabeth) The Woes of Maddison Page (diapersnpaws) Because of Morgan (Mina Taylor) Kit and Kenzie (Sophie & Pudding) Little Luzy ˇ (Sophie & Pudding) ˇ both very graphic sex scenes and extreme trigger warnings for various nonconsensual activities Internet Top 10 (again...by Kerry) (must be complete) Adventures in Timecatting French Whines In For a Penni Life and Death Choices Made Casually Lily the Liar The Woes of Maddison PageRaquel’s Only Wish / Raquel's Wish Resurrection Stories We Tell The Ryan and Dorie Story I should add some Diaper Dimension stories, including the original, as well. I'll get around to it. :-)

This is a story that is so good that I feel while I read it that it will end up on my All-Time Internet Best list (published on another site) when it is finished. :-) Kerry

Unethical teachers are one thing. Teachers who dislike you for no reason and take it out on your grades are another thing. As a teacher, I have to admit that these things happen though they are and should be rare (just like the drunk first period teacher). However, in this case Danny has evidence that he did not fail the test. It would never be a matter of "you get the grade on the test whether it is right or not." If anything, Jennifer should be the one doing the project for screwing him over so intentionally. (Her animosity would undoubtedly increase and that could be useful narratively.) I'm just saying that the total lack of reality in the last period class pulled me away from the story, which had been interesting until that point. BTW: I agree with the comment that these kids sound much younger than 17.

Thanks. About Allison's decision: I sort of doubt that many people would actually choose vampirism if they actually thought about it. (Well, maybe Bella in Twilight, but that was a unique circumstance.) I think it almost needs to be a sudden, precipitous decision like Allison's: think about the advantages without thinking about the consequences. Anyway...I don't know if there will be any more. I intended it as a one-off, but who knows? I might get inspired...

God, Eire is a harsh and terrible place for Littles. It is amazing that you manage to make what is clearly a demeaning and (literally) dehumanizing existence into something that can sound desirable and happy: it's a talent. Here is an error: The fox in Aimee's mind was telling her

(5) “Oh. My. God!” Mandy said as they waited for their tacos. “Are you, like, kidding me?” All three had squeed their congratulations after hearing of the promotion, but this was the first time Stephanie told them about who had delivered it. “Are you sure she’s the same woman” Gemma asked. “No,” Stephanie said. “But how many brunettes have one green eye and one amber eye?” “Holy shit!” said Jess. “Ho-ly shit!” “That’s not all,” Stephanie told them. “I’ve been to the ladies’ room again. And I was still dry!” “OhmyGod, OhmyGod, OhmyGod, OhmyGod, OhmyGod,” Mandy stammered. “This is amazing!” “‘Amazing’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” Stephanie said. “Incredible,” offered Jess. “Astounding,” said Gemma. The game was on and it was back to Mandy. “Unprecedented,” she said. Stephanie jumped in. “Mind-boggling!” Jess threw in “Unbelievable!” before Gemma jumped in with “Phenomenal!” Then Mandy said, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” Everyone laughed, and Mandy added, “What? I mean, if ever there was a time that word was, like, appropriate, this is it.” When the laughter died down, and the tacos had arrived, it was Gemma who asked, “What now?” “What do you mean?” asked Stephanie. “Well I think you’re technically our boss,” she said. “Oh, poo! Like I care about that.” Jess swallowed a bite of her food. “It will change things,” she said. “First time one of us has to do work for you. It’ll change things.” Stephanie considered. “You may have a point, but can we all agree to do our best not to let it? I mean things don’t have to change between us just because work crap changes.” Mandy nodded. “We can try,” she said, and they all agreed. Gemma pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse. “What’s that?” asked Stephanie. “That,” Gemma said, “is the trifecta. Your job is more fulfilling. Your incontinence is gone.” “That remains to be seen,” Stephanie interrupted. “Well, I’m being optimistic. And now for the last piece of the puzzle.” She handed her friend the paper. “I found this online and printed it out for you. I’ll do it if you will.” Stephanie unfolded it and found an ad for an improv class run by Second City. It was an open class; no experience needed. She smiled. Trifecta. She reached over to hug her friend. “This is the best day of my life,” she said. As they finished their lunch and got up to leave, Stephanie noticed a familiar face at the bar. “Guys, I’ll meet you back at work, OK? There’s something I need to take care of.” After the others left, she wandered over to the bar and took the seat the old woman had left vacant for her. “I ordered you a Coke,” the woman said. “Shouldn’t be drinking at lunch.” Stephanie picked up the Coke with a smile and took a sip, unsurprised that it was the best one she could ever remember drinking. “You have questions,” the woman said. “You have answers?” Stephanie asked. Nodding, the woman indicated that they should move to a booth for better privacy. Once they were there, she smiled. “I guess you’ve had a heck of a day.” Stephanie’s smile matched the woman’s. “I’m sure you know just exactly the day I’ve had.” “Yes,” she said. “As I said before, I know everything about you.” “You do realize how completely creepy that is, don’t you?” The woman laughed. “There’s a lot about Santa that’s creepy, if you take it that way. He knows when you are sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. I mean! And how about the dude sneaking around your house in the middle of the night? How about his close relationships with all of the world’s children? If you wanted to build a case on circumstantial evidence, well, let’s just say it’s there. But that’s not what you want to talk about.” “No. What happened? I didn’t wish for anything for myself. I wished for that homeless woman, that Lauren Neumaier. And anyway I was going to choose Option 3. What’s going on?” The old woman smiled somewhere from so deep within her that Stephanie could swear she could almost she her soul. “Santa was more than impressed. As I told you, you were not the first person ever to be offered a miracle. You were, however, the first person ever to reject the offer. That action moved you from Very Nice to Utterly, Ridiculously Nice.” “There is no such thing.” “OK, you caught me. But if there were, you’d have made the list and it would be a list of one.” “So what then?” “When Santa saw what you did, it moved him. And you have to understand he’s seen it all: he’s not easily moved these days. So he granted your wish for the homeless woman, as you know.” “Yeah,” said Stephanie. “And she works where I do. Coincidence?” “In my experience,” the old woman told her, “there are no such things. Anyway, you clearly deserved help as well, so...I see the incontinence is clearing up—it won’t be perfect for awhile yet, but I’ll bet you’ll be out of diapers this year—and your job is more fulfilling, and you get to explore acting.” “But I thought you said no one could have more than one miracle.” “Did I? Well...who said any of these things were miracles anyway? Maybe the incontinence was just due to clear up. Maybe this Neumaier woman, who has worked at your firm for years, and you can check personnel records if you don’t believe me, just had her oddly colored eyes on you because she liked what she saw. Maybe Gemma offered you the improv class because she’s your friend. None of that needs to be a miracle.” Stephanie shook her head. “You know as well as I do what it was.” “Do I? And what would that be?” “Santa Claus, of course!” “You do know how crazy that would sound if anyone heard you,” the old woman said. Stephanie was exasperated. “I know you’re making me crazy.” The old woman smiled and rose from the booth, followed by her younger companion. Grabbing her handbag, the old woman zippered her coat and turned to Stephanie. “You’re an amazing person, Stephanie Alder. You deserve all of the joy that is coming to you. Be well.” As she turned to leave, Stephanie reached out and touched her sleeve. “What about you? Will I ever see you again?” “That’s doubtful,” the old woman said. “I’ll always be watching over you, of course—it’s my job—but I really need to move on now. There’s this family of five in Belize that really needs my help, and you wouldn’t even believe how Nice all of them are.” Stephanie smiled, shaking her head slightly. “You have to bring up Belize, don’t you? Just when I was beginning to really like you.” The old woman laughed. “It’s OK, Dear. Winter won’t last forever. And if it’s any consolation they’re having an off-season tropical storm right now.” Stephanie shook her head. “Can’t find consolation in that, sorry.” “Of course not. You wouldn’t be you if you could.” “Thank you for everything,” Stephanie said after the shortest of pauses. “You’re very welcome,” said the old woman as she turned and walked out of Stephanie Alder’s life. *************** *************** *************** *************** The letter was gone from under the tree. Stephanie hadn’t even noticed that this morning, in all of the craziness with her new bathroom needs, but it still boggled her mind, as did all of the events of the last 24 hours. In the grand scheme of things, she supposed that the missing letter was a very low-ranking mystery. Best not to wonder. Maybe she never even really wrote it at all. I could have dreamed it. I did have a lot to drink. But that didn’t explain away today. And it didn’t explain the old woman. Nothing explained the old woman. She poured a glass of wine, turned on the TV, and put in Miracle on 34th Street. She’d had her own miracles, she was sure. And as Willow cuddled up in her lap and Kris Kringle tried to convince the world that he was the real Santa Claus, she, an adult who believed in Santa Claus, let herself slip gently away into the only place she knew where dreams were always real. ##

My apologies that I can’t change the title at this time. Something about writing on an iPad I think. Anyway...there really is a new chapter. (Ch 4) CHapter 5, the last chapter, is coming soon.

4) The ride home was less dramatic than the ride to the party had been. No unusual elf-woman sharing her seat, for starters. But it didn’t matter. Stephanie had a lot to think about. The choices that the woman had laid out were certainly tempting. With the first choice, the money saved alone on not having to buy diapers would make a world of difference to her, not to mention the freedom of not having to wear them. With the second, well, who doesn’t want to see the road not traveled, she thought? But see it, not necessarily live it. What if it were not a life she’d want? Well, this one isn’t a life I want anyway, except for my friends. My friends. How could she just give up her friends? And her cat! Willow suddenly popped into her mind. Until this moment she hadn’t realized either of the drastic choices would mean she’d no longer have Willow! Well, maybe we’d end up together anyway. Who knows? But even as she thought it, she knew it was a silly notion. Choosing either of options two or three, the ones her friends thought she should choose, would lose all of them. If any of this even means anything. If she was even an elf. She shook her head, hardly believing she was realistically thinking that thought. It was the most insane idea she’d ever entertained before; was she losing her mind? Well, if I am, so are my friends, she thought, as the train rolled into her station. Bundled up in her faux fur and a scarf tied over her face, Stephanie almost missed the pile of rags and cardboard tucked into a break between the buildings. The cardboard offered privacy and acted as a break for any wind that came directly from the east, as the buildings effectively blocked all other directions. Another homeless person outside on a night like this. It was heartbreaking. And it became all the more heartbreaking when she noticed the green boot extending slightly outside of the ragged blanket under the cardboard lean-to. The same woman. There must have been no room at the shelter, or she didn’t even try to go. And this is her life: days begging for what she can get and nights sleeping between buildings in the cold. A tear ran down Stephanie’s cheek and she instinctively reached up to wipe it before it could freeze. What did she do to deserve this? she thought. There was nothing she could do to help the woman now, so she crossed the street and headed back to her condo. Where I’ll be safe and warm, she thought. *************** *************** *************** *************** She sat on her sofa with a glass of wine. Drinking way too much tonight. It was a problem, but she was home and alone, so she didn’t need to worry about anything. She did need to think, though. She had a decision to make; her mind should be clear. But it’s OK, she thought. The eggnog was really weak; it’s already worn off. When it came right down to it, though, the choice was simple: in for a penny; easy peasy. If she was going to reset her life, she might as well be the one with some agency in it, making all of the conscious decisions that would determine what that life would consist of. The “road not taken” option ultimately was a crapshoot, she thought. But a hard reset at age thirteen would leave all roads untaken; she could decide for herself. “Maybe I won’t ever meet you, Willow,” she said to the cat. “Maybe you’ll be adopted by someone else and live with them and give all of your purring and love to them.” The cat rubbed her face against Stephanie’s arm. “Yeah, you’re sweet, that’s for sure. No question if I’m somewhere else tomorrow morning you’ll be fine. I’d say I’ll miss you, but I’m not sure I’ll remember. I don’t know; maybe I will.” For the first time, she realized she didn’t know if she’d be heading back into her life or just becoming younger today. Assuming it was true, She decided it had to be her own life. Santa must realize the other way would create enormous complications. A child alone? And she really didn’t know if she’d remember things. Guess I’ll find out, she chuckled. Or not. It was a bit ironic, she thought. The last time she was thirteen years old, she’d lost her faith in Santa Claus. Now she might relive that age because of him. Did my thirteen-year-old self even know what irony is? She stared across the room at her small Christmas tree, decorated with ornaments from her childhood and from what thus far had been her adulthood. With a few sips of the wine in her, she felt the warmth radiating from the tree’s light. Stephanie loved Christmas trees; they brought back the magic she had lost so long ago. Maybe I’ve found it again? she wondered. This had all started with a letter to Santa so many years ago. Wouldn’t it be perfect to bring it full circle and write a new letter? She got up and found some paper and a pen before returning to the sofa. Laying the paper on the coffee table, she began to write: Dear Santa, Thank you for this opportunity. I have decided to take the third option and return to seventh grade to start again in the hopes that the decisions I will make might lead my life in a different and more fulfilling direction. She stopped. What was she doing? She rose from the sofa and walked to the large front window. Looking down, she could see the train station across the street. She couldn’t make anything out in the shadow between the buildings, but she knew the homeless woman was there, sleeping in the chill. I need a different direction in my life? God, all I am is bored! She’s starving and freezing! Still uncertain about any of this, Stephanie Alder returned to her table and took a large sip of her wine. Then she crumpled up her letter and started a new one. Dear Santa, Thank you so much for the opportunity you offered me. I don’t know if this is possible, but if it is could you please take Option 2 and apply it to the homeless woman who sleeps in the alleyway near the train station? It seems to me that, if anyone needs to discover what the road not taken would have been like, it’s someone like her. Thank you, Stephanie A She picked up the letter and read it through. Satisfied, she folded it, wrote “To Santa” on it, and placed it under the tree before downing the rest of her wine and heading to bed. ***************** ***************** ****************** In the morning, Stephanie awoke with the oddest sensation she had ever felt: she needed to go to the bathroom. It was a fairly strong urge, and she understood it for what it was though she had never known it before. When she took her diaper off, she was stunned to see that, for the first time ever, it was dry. What’s going on here? Confused, she quickly did her business and taped the unused diaper back on before getting dressed for work, shooing Willow off of her bed as she sat down to put on her clothes. “No, baby: I need that spot.” The little cat jumped right back onto the bed, but this time stayed a couple of feet away as it curled up, allowing Stephanie to get read and go outside. The homeless woman wasn’t in her usual place—maybe she went to the shelter after all—and Stephanie’s ride into work was unmarred by any miraculous beings engaging her in conversation. When she got there, all three of her friends met her in the break room. “What gives?” Gemma said. “I knew as soon as I woke up that it was either all a fraud or you chose Option 1.” Stephanie smiled. “I honestly don’t know. I mean I didn’t choose Option 1. I didn’t choose any option, not for myself.” She explained to her friends about the homeless woman and about how her morning had been going. “So you’re not incontinent any more?” Jess asked her. Stephanie rolled her eyes. “I woke up dry, that’s all. It was weird, but a coincidence. Besides, I didn’t even ask for anything. And if I had I was going to ask for Option 3.” “Yeah,” Mandy said. “Makes sense. Start over so you can control what happens.” “Something like that. I’d have missed you guys, though. Do you think you could have befriended a little kid?” Gemma smiled. “If she was you? Of course!” Jess interrupted. “We’d better get out there. They said we’d be getting a visitor from upstairs today. We don’t want to look lazy.” “True that,” Gemma said. She raised her cup. “Welcome back, Stephanie. It’s like you never left!” Everyone clinked cups and headed out to their cubicles. About an hour later, Stephanie looked up to find her immediate superior, Bella, standing there. “You look busy,” Bella said. Stephanie smiled. “I’m always busy.” “That’s actually what I’d like to talk with you about. Could you step into my office for a few minutes?” Stephanie was apprehensive. Had she done something wrong? She may not like this job but she certainly couldn’t afford to be let go. Still, she didn’t allow her concern to show on her face. Smiling, she followed Bella into her office. To her surprise, there was someone else already there, and older woman, sharply dressed, with close-cropped brunette hair. She was a very attractive woman, but there was something a bit odd about her that Stephanie could not place. “Stephanie Alder, this is Lauren Neumaier, one of our Vice Presidents of Human Resources. You probably haven’t had the opportunity to talk with her before, but she has asked to see you.” Human Resources. They are letting me go. Shit! Lauren Neumaier held out her hand with a smile, which confused Stephanie. “Please sit down,” she said. Once everyone was seated, it was Lauren who began. “You’ve been on my radar for a long time, Stephanie. Most of the people down here do their jobs and go home. I don’t blame them; we all know that this work is pretty uninspiring.” Stephanie didn’t know if she should agree with that or not, so she kept quiet. “You, on the other hand: well, you may find it just as boring as everyone else does, for all I know, but you approach it with enthusiasm. You even stay late when there is an especially difficult case to deal with.” Bellamy. She’s talking about Bellamy. I’m not being fired after all. “We were all impressed with the work you did on the Bellamy case. The account manager and three others before you had missed that error, and it could have cost the firm millions.” Stephanie’s face reddened. “It was just my job, what I do.” “Yes,” Lauren agreed. “But you do it very, very well. I started watching you then and I’ve noticed that you’ve caught several other, smaller errors as well. Individually they are not Bellamy, but together they’d have amounted to even more. You’re very good, Stephanie, and you deserve a reward.” Bella, from behind her desk, interjected at this point. “Mrs. Neumaier would like to offer you the position of junior account manager. It comes with an office, your own accounts, and of course a pretty significant raise.” Lauren, whose attention had gone to Bella, turned back to Stephanie. “Are you interested?” Stephanie was almost in a state of shock. Her dead-end job was over? She might be doing much more interesting things with her numbers than merely checking them over for errors? Of course she was interested! “Yes! I mean, yes, I’d love to accept that offer.” Both of the other women smiled. Lauren stood up and said, “Great! You’ll begin Monday. Find me on 23 and I’ll get you situated.” As Stephanie stood and shook the woman’s hand, she suddenly realized what was unusual about Lauren Neumaier: she had different colored eyes, one green and one very nearly amber. Stephanie stared at her as she walked away. That’s impossible. “Stephanie?” Bella’s voice sounded as if it was in a fog. “Stephanie?” She suddenly turned back to her boss...at least for today. “Oh, sorry. Lost in thought there.” “Well, I can hardly blame you. Congratulations! Why don’t you use today to clear out anything you can. We won’t send you anything new. If there are still things left by, say, 4:00, let me know and I’ll shift them to someone else so you can clear out your desk and stuff and then enjoy the weekend. OK?” Stephanie nodded. “Thanks, Bella,” she said, and headed back onto the floor.

Yes, sorry: some computer issues right now. I’m trying to get used to doing things on an iPad for the moment...

Thanks! I appreciate your comments, and I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I had a great time writing it; Stephanie proved to be a fun character to play with. Penultimate chapter will be up tomorrow.

(3)Gemma sipped a cocktail. Stephanie wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was red and there was a cherry in it. She herself was nursing some eggnog; there was brandy in it, but not too much. It was her second glass though. Mandy and Jess each had a glass of red wine. Pentatonix’ Christmas CD was playing, the newly engaged Justin and Stacy and some other couples were dancing, and the four women had commandeered a table in a corner to talk.“She said she was from Santa Claus?” Mandy asked. “Like North Pole Santa Claus?”Stephanie shrugged. “Well she said he doesn’t really live there, but is there one at the South Pole I haven’t heard of?”“No, it’s just that—”“She knew stuff,” Stephanie argued. “I mean she knew intimate stuff. About me. About my life. Things she couldn’t possibly have known.”Jess shook her head. “And she just came and sat down with you?”“Like I was her destination. Which I guess I was.”Gemma reached out and placed her free hand on Stephanie’s. “OK, Steph. I think we get what you’ve been saying, but you have to admit it’s pretty wild.”Stephanie looked at her friends’ faces one at a time and realized that she was seeing concern. They were worried about her.“I’m not losing my mind, guys,” she said. “It happened!”Mandy smiled. “I don’t doubt that for a moment, Steph. But maybe you’d had some, like, wine or something before leaving home? Maybe some of it was alcohol talking?”Stephanie sighed and shook her head. “No. It wasn’t that. I swear I didn’t have a thing to drink. You know me: I don’t ever drink to excess. I don’t like to be vulnerable.”Her friends had to acknowledge that much was true. “But that still didn’t mean you had a sit-down on the train with Santa’s helper,” Jess said.“Yeah,” Mandy agreed, shaking her head. “I mean I’m not the world’s smartest chiquita, but like one thing I know is there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”Stephanie turned to Gemma, who was polishing off her drink. “Hey, don’t look at me,” the taller woman said. “I never believed in him in the first place.”“Never?” Stephanie asked. “Even when you were a little girl?”“What can I say?” Gemma smirked. “Mom didn’t believe in teaching us to believe in fairy tales.”Jess laughed. “And thus we have Gemma, the Woman Without an Imagination. Perfect for this job, I’d say.”“I have an imagination, thank you,” Gemma retorted. “I could imagine you as a friend, couldn’t I?”All of them laughed this time, but Stephanie regained composure quickly.“Come on, guys!” she begged. “I need help here. What should I do?” Gemma got up to get another drink. As she did, she looked seriously at Stephanie. “Well, it seems to me that you have two questions to deal with.”“Which are?”“First, do you believe she was on the level? And second, if so, which of her options do you take?”Stephanie slowly drank from her own glass as Gemma walked away. Leave it to Gemma to treat this thing logically. She didn’t honestly know if the old woman had been what she claimed. In the moment it sure seemed so, but as she recounted it to her friends it all just seemed so...silly. And yet…Mandy interrupted her thoughts. “Are you actually entertaining the thought that this woman may have been legit? I mean, like, an elf?”Stephanie looked up, confused, and shrugged. “She was a strange person who knew too much about me to be any sort of coincidence. Guys, she even knew I used to dream about acting! No one knew that. Well, I mean except for you. How is that possible without there being something…” She really didn’t want to say the word out loud. “...supernatural about it?”Jess spoke up. “Maybe you should just assume the old woman was Santa’s emissary? I mean if she wasn’t, then no harm no foul, but if she was, then…”“Then you’d have a major life decision to make tonight,” Mandy said.“Oh God.” Stephanie drained her eggnog and got up to get a third glass. “I just wanted a nice evening with you guys and now it’s my whole future.”She walked over to the eggnog table, smiling as her co-workers commented on how “cute” her outfit was. That’s what I wanted. Looking back across the room at her friends, it suddenly struck her that most young women her age would have gone for sexy but she went for cute. What does that say about me? She wandered back to her friends with her refilled beverage.“Steph,” Gemma, who had returned while Stephanie was gone, said, “We’ve been talking.”“Yeah?”“Yeah. I mean, what are you leaning toward?”“You mean which option?”“Yeah,” Gemma said.Stephanie smiled. “That’s easy. The first one. I get to keep all of you as friends and lose the diapers. Easy peasy.”She raised her glass as for a toast, but no one followed. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Gemma’s serious expression was echoed on the faces of the others. She continued. “It’s just that...we’re not sure it should be that easy.”“What do you mean?” Stephanie asked.Mandy answered. “You’re not really, like, happy.”Jess added, “You never have been, as long as we’ve known you.”Finally, Gemma picked up the refrain as “The Little Drummer Boy” came on. “I mean we can deal with the mindless drone work, Steph. You just don’t seem to be able to. I think you need something more.”“More?”“I don’t know,” Gemma said. “Maybe like she said: maybe you made the wrong choices.”“But I always liked math!” Stephanie protested.“Maybe that’s not enough?” Mandy asked.Stephanie pictured the countless hours she had already spent poring over sheets of numbers, entering them into computers, crunching the results, analyzing what came out, printing it all as reports and shipping it off upstairs so she could start again with new numbers. Then she pictured years and years more of the same drudgery. They were right. It wasn’t enough. The only time it had even been interesting was the day last year when she’d caught that egregious error in the Bellamy account. She knew right away that someone had made a horrible mistake and, sure enough, there was all sorts of commotion upstairs as a result of it. There were a few other, smaller moments along the line, but most of the time it was enter, crunch, analyze, print, ship, again and again and again and again and ag—. This was her life. This was not what she wanted from her life.“But I’d have to keep the diapers,” she complained. And then with a sudden realization: “And I’d never see you guys again.”Her friends looked at each other, some secret passing among them. It was Jess who spoke up, a tear in her eye. “We talked about that. We hate it.”“It, like, absolutely sucks,” Mandy agreed.Jess went on. “You’re our best friend. But that’s why we think you should do this. Friendship is about thinking of the other person, not yourself.”“Fine,” Stephanie said. “Think of me. I don’t want to lose you all! It would hurt too much. Hell, it hurts that you could imagine life without me.”Gemma put her hand on Stephanie’s. “We can’t,” she said. “But we don’t have to. If you hit the reset button, we’d never have known you. We wouldn’t know what we were missing at all. Heck, you might not even know. And as for the diapers, you’ve always had them anyway; nothing different there.”“Yeah,” Jess said. “We’ve had this much fun together. Time for you to get some more enjoyment out of your life. And tomorrow we won’t even realize that you’re...gone.”She choked back a tear on the last word, and Mandy gave her a hug.“God that’s weird,” Gemma and Stephanie said simultaneously and then, after a brief pause, burst out laughing.Gemma raised the glass she’d procured while Stephanie was refilling her eggnog. “To Stephanie!” she said. “To friendship and silliness and the single most bizarre way to end a relationship that anyone has ever heard of.”Everyone raised their glasses. “Hear, hear!”“Well,” said Stephanie, “let’s stay as long as my diaper holds out and enjoy ourselves, OK? If this is the end of my time with you and perhaps the end of my 20s, at least for now, I might as well have a good time.”“I’ll drink to that too!” said Jess, and they all raised their glasses once again.

(2)On the train, she sat in her favorite place: the end facing seats. She always took them in the hope that no one would sit in the opposite seat, thus giving her the equivalent of two full seats to herself. She unfastened her coat buttons for comfort, plugged in her headphones, and sat back for the half-hour ride. On this night, luck wasn’t with her; the seat across from her was taken at the very next stop by a woman about her grandmother’s age. “Excuse me, Dear,” the woman said, piling an oversized purse and a shopping bag onto the seat. “Just doing a bit of last minute shopping.”Stephanie smiled, acknowledging her, and would have gone back to her music, annoyed by the fact that there were open seats elsewhere, if the woman hadn’t immediately continued, returning her smile and obviously admiring her Christmas outfit.“That’s a beautiful outfit,” she said.“Thank you,” answered Stephanie. “My mother gave it to me.”The old woman seemed lost in thought for a moment. “My youngest lives in Wilmette, but I’ve always loved shopping in Evanston.”Stephanie popped her earpieces out. “Yes,” she said, “I think it has a great downtown.”The woman smiled. “Do you live there, Sweetheart? Do you go to Evanston Township High School?”Although she knew she looked young, Stephanie was nonetheless unprepared for someone actually thinking she was still in high school. She wasn’t sure quite how to react, so for a moment she was just silent. Then she said, simply, “No. I mean I do live in Evanston. But I’m not in high school.”The woman looked surprised. “Oh, my!” she said. “When you get to my age, sometimes it’s hard to tell ages correctly. I thought you looked high school age.”Stephanie shook her head. “I’m not.”“Well, don’t worry,” the woman said. “You’ll get there. It can’t possibly be more than a year or two away, right?”Sitting across from the woman, Stephanie was astonished. She knew she looked younger, but high school age was incredible. And now, given the knowledge that she was not of high school age, this woman assumed she was younger still? Was she nuts? At this point, though, it was clear to her that the old woman was just being nice, even if she was sort of weird, and correcting her would embarrass her, so she decided to play along. What can it hurt?“Um, no. I mean I’ll be there next year,” she said, feeling really foolish.The woman nodded. “You’ll like it. I went to ETHS back in the day. It’s a really good school. I’m sure it’s only gotten better, at least from what I read.”Stephanie could see the woman’s sincerity. “That’s what my, um, mom tells me,” she said.“I really enjoyed the theatre department. Do you act?”She shook her head. “Never tried it.”“You really should. I’ll bet you’re really good at improvisation; you seem as if you could just roll with anything.”Stephanie’s eyes went a bit wide. Was the woman toying with her? Did she know that Stephanie was no middle schooler? She tried to search for anything like sarcasm or meanness in the woman’s eyes but there was nothing there. The woman was innocent as the new day. So Stephanie keep “rolling” with what was happening.“I suppose,” she said. “My friends tell me I’m pretty quick.”“I’ll bet you are,” said the woman, now looking at her a bit more carefully. “Can you give me an example?”It was such an odd conversation, Stephanie thought, and not only because she was pretending to be thirteen years old. This woman seemed weirdly interested in her. Ah well; it’s passing the time. So she considered what she could tell the woman that would be true to the middle schooler she thought she was. Realizing that the best lies are the closest to the truth, she decided to tell the story of how she got out of a jam with some random guy at a party last month.“Well, there was this boy I met at a friend’s party, and at first he was really nice, but as the party wore on he got kind of grabby, like he wanted to get to second base and such, right there in the living room.”“And you didn’t want that.”“No! Not at all.”“What did you do?”“I have an alarm on my phone that sounds like it’s ringing, you know? And I can set it off with just one click, so I did, and I pretended to be talking to my mom and arguing with her about having to come home right away. Then when I got off the phone I told him I needed to leave and I did.”The woman smiled. “Clever girl.”Stephanie shrugged. “It worked.” She was beginning to enjoy this little game, silly as it was, so she was glad when the woman continued it.“What’s your favorite class?”“Well, I’ve always liked math,” she responded without thinking, but then she thought about how dull and repetitive her life was and amended her answer. “But I’m finding English really interesting too. All the character stuff and all. And reading out loud.”The woman’s smile grew broader. “I knew you were a little actress at heart.”“Well I’ve never tried it, as I said” Stephanie said, “but I always thought it looked like fun.”“You should try it,” the woman said. “You’re a natural. Promise me you’ll at least take a theatre class once you get to high school.”Stephanie hated making a promise that was an outright lie, but, hey, in for a penny… “I promise!” she said with all the enthusiasm she could muster.The old woman sat back and smiled to herself. “Do you mind if I ask you a very personal question?” she asked.Stephanie was a bit taken aback. Why should this woman, whom she’d just met ten minutes earlier, even want to ask personal questions. But she’d indulged her so far, and something nagging at her inside told her to continue to do so.“Um...it’s weird, but I guess not.”The woman leaned forward again. “Promise you won’t get upset.”That was certainly unexpected. What the heck? But Stephanie stayed the course. After all, she was getting off the train in a couple of stops and she’d never see this woman again. “No, I won’t. Ask me anything.”Still leaning in, the woman lowered her voice. “Have you always needed diapers?”Stephanie’s face went pale. How can she—? She looked down at herself, at the way she was sitting. There was the faintest mound where there shouldn’t be one in her crotch, but nothing noticeable under dark green velvet. “No, don’t worry,” said the woman as if reading her mind. “It’s not something obvious. It’s just...when you’re old and you’ve changed a ton of diapers and you find you need them again yourself, you notice. You know how they say gay people have gaydar? I have diaperdar.”It would have made Stephanie laugh, but she was still too freaked out to do so. “So, have you?” the woman asked? “Always needed them?”Stephanie nodded. “Y-yes. I’ve been…” she whispered the next word “...incontinent all of my life, and medication doesn’t work.”The woman’s eyes looked sympathetic. “Must have been hard.”Stephanie startled herself by laughing. “That is the understatement of all time. I even wrote to Santa once asking to get rid of them, but of course no go.”The woman looked confused. “Why ‘of course’?”“Well, you know, Santa.”“Ahh...and you’re too old for all of that, right?”Stephanie shrugged. “Let's just say he didn’t deliver. Anyway I am too old to believe in Santa.”“Well, of course you are. May I ask: was that the reason?”“Excuse me?”“The letter you wrote. When you didn’t get your Christmas wish that year, is that what caused you not to believe?”Stephanie thought about it for a moment. “I guess so. But really: once you know the truth it’s all pretty obvious.”“How so?”Stephanie couldn’t believe she was actually making a logical argument why there was no Santa Claus. This was the weirdest day ever. “Well, for starters, how about the fact that, right then, I stopped getting gifts ‘from Santa’? Or that my parents never did? I mean I hadn’t noticed that before, of course, but it was a glaring omission afterwards. My parents are good people; why would Santa skip them...if he existed?”The old woman shrugged. “Ever hear of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”“Sure,” Stephanie answered, nodding. “The kind of prediction that you make that, by the nature of the decisions you make following it, is bound to come true.”“Exactly,” the old woman said. “Santa’s wishes are a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.”“I don’t get it.”“Let me ask you another question: have you written to Santa since that letter he didn’t answer?”Stephanie shook her head. “What would be the point? He doesn’t exist.”“You’re so certain. Couldn’t it be that, by not writing him, you failed to ask for anything, thus you didn’t get anything? And your parents, I’m assuming, don’t write to him either.”Still trying to get her mind around the woman’s last bit of argument to see if it was in fact logical, Stephanie simply said, “Never.”“There you have it,” said the old woman. “Self-fulfilling prophecies.”Stephanie finally waded through the logic puzzle and found its flaw. “You say that the lack of a letter is why it wasn’t answered. OK, fine. But this all began because he didn’t answer a letter I did write.”The woman smiled. “Did you ever stop to consider that maybe he had reasons?”The conversation was fascinating. Indulging this woman was interesting, but it sure wasn’t easy. “What possible reasons?”“Well,” she said, “maybe it’s just beyond his skillset. I mean he is a toymaker, after all, and you asked for a miracle. Wrong Christmas icon to pray to, I’d say. But beyond that, maybe he just thought there were life lessons you still needed to learn.”Stephanie thought back to when she was really twelve or thirteen years old, back to when she’d sent that letter. “Like what?”The woman’s smile was gentle. “Perhaps, in high school, you might come to understand that there are many, many people in the world who would trade their positions for yours. Perhaps you might even discover that under certain circumstances being diapered can be a positive thing. And maybe, in college, you might learn things that allow you to actually enjoy being diapered.”Stephanie was stunned into silence listening to this woman summarize exactly what had happened to her in her life. She thought back to high school, the first time she started becoming comfortable with herself. Oh, she was jealous of the girls who could complete the wonderful, sexy images the media threw at them with the taut, flat crotches and round, sensuous behinds, but she had never thought of herself as much of a sexual girl, so the images were more academic than anything else. In her diapers she could be cute; that was always good enough for her even if no one else got to see it. And she had learned about so many other people around the world who spent their lives suffering, so many to whom her small issue would seem a picnic. Of course it was in high school too that she had first discovered that diapers could be a protection against unwanted advances. It wasn’t that she let the boys see them; it was that she knew they were there and thus was way more cautious than she otherwise might have been. Oh, she did drink, but she learned her limits and stayed strictly within them. She decided that she’d know the boy who was right for her because he’d be the one she felt comfortable telling her secret to; no such boy ever emerged, not even in college, where she had indeed discovered the cute diapers that made her needs less painful and a little more fun. How could this woman know all of this?“Um, pardon me, but that’s a lot of really specific information. What’s going on here?”“You’re a really good girl, Stephanie,” the woman said. Did I tell her my name? I don’t remem—“You wanted nothing more than a quiet train ride to your party, but you indulged an old woman for no reason other than the kindness in your heart, even when I asked ridiculously personal questions.”“Well, I—”“Well, nothing, Sweetie. You’re a good person. You’ve spent your whole life being a good person. Your friends know it, and I think you know it too.”Stephanie was stunned. “My...whole...life?”The woman tilted her head to one side and winked. “Oh come, now, Stephanie. We can stop playing now. I know you’re not in middle school.”“You...do?”“Of course. Though I wasn’t kidding that you are adorable enough to pass as someone much younger than you are, seventh grade was sort of pushing it a bit.”“So you’ve just been messing with me?”The old woman smiled. “More like getting to know you better.”“You don’t know me at all,” Stephanie said. “You just met me.”The woman nodded. “True, true. But it feels as if I’ve known you for a very long time. I think maybe you remind me of someone I used to know.”Stephanie was silent for a long moment. The conversation, odd from the start, was getting way too weird, and now there was a touch of sadness in the woman’s voice. “Someone...you’ve lost?”The woman smiled gently. “Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking. You remind me of a much younger version of myself.”Stephanie considered this for a moment. “In what way?”“You have all the desire and dreams in the world, but life keeps building walls to keep them away. Isn’t that right, Dear?”Can she read that from my face? Stephanie wondered. There was no doubt about its truth. She was only 27, but life was already feeling to her like one example of settling after another. She begrudgingly accepted her incontinence because there was nothing to be done about it. Oh she’d tried all the medicines on the market; the only result was that the insurance companies got richer. And she’d stopped even looking for a guy; who would really want her anyway? And then there was her job: how she’d managed to trap herself into life in a dull cubicle in an accounting firm sometimes astounded her; it certainly wasn’t what she wanted back in high school when she dreamed of a very different life. She may have loved working with numbers, but she had no taste whatsoever for drudgery. She’d only gotten a C in one quarter of that geometry class despite how much she loved it because she refused to do the busywork the teacher assigned. And despite what she told the old woman, she’d always wanted to be an actress. She just never had the guts to try it out. And one thing led to another and...life built its walls.“I guess it is,” she said, “but isn’t that true for everyone?”“Not necessarily. Some actually realize their dreams. But that isn’t what defines a successful life.”Stephanie was puzzled. “What is?”“Being happy in the life you’re living. What else could anyone ask for?”“But I’m happy.”The old woman smiled wanly. “Are you? Do you feel fulfilled by what you do for a living?”For at least the fifth time, Stephanie felt herself taken aback by the woman’s remark. Either this woman was an excellent judge of character or she knew things about Stephanie. But how could she know? “I’m an accountant doing mostly data entry,” Stephanie offered, going for a light joke. “How fulfilled should I be?”Again there was that same small smile. “I think that, if you were meant to be an accountant, you should feel quite fulfilled indeed. But maybe there was something else you wanted? Something you changed your mind about or never tried? A road not taken?”Stephanie’s mind flashed back to her sophomore year in high school. She was sixteen and looked younger, and her social life was inhibited still by the incontinence; she’d not yet learned to have fun despite it. She did have friends though, and both Cammie and Patricia were attempting to talk her into trying out for the school musical. They were doing Fiddler on the Roof and her friends thought she’d be perfect for the part of the second youngest daughter, Chava. On the day of the audition, though, she chickened out. Cammie ended up playing Hodel and Patricia was in the chorus, and inevitably they made new theatre friends and grew apart from Stephanie, who watched the musical a bit jealous of them and the girl who did get the part of Chava.“There might have been some things,” she admitted.“You know there have been as well as I do,” said the old woman. “There is nothing about sitting in a cubicle all day playing with numbers on a screen that fulfills anything you ever dreamed about.”“How do you—? OK, now, this is too much. How can you know so much about me that I haven’t told you? What’s going on here? Are you just messing with me?”“No, not at all, Dear. That is not in my job description. No, I was sent to find out if you are indeed the person we thought you are. And—good news!—you are.”Stephanie was utterly lost. This conversation, in which she felt relatively comfortable, had taken a turn for the weird that she simply couldn’t fathom. “You were sent— Who...who are you?” she asked.The woman smiled broadly. “Ah, you’ve asked the six million dollar question, the answer to which will make everything make sense. Well, maybe not sense exactly, but at least there will be some sort of logic involved. Have you no guesses?”By this point, Stephanie had come to the conclusion that she was most definitely in the Twilight Zone. Or dreaming. This could easily all be a dream. She reached down and pinched her arm.“Not a dream, Sweetie.”“But you’re...you’re not normal, are you?” Stephanie asked.The old woman laughed. “If by that you mean, am I just an old woman who was out Christmas shopping? Then the answer is no, I’m not.”Stephanie tried to understand. Suddenly It’s a Wonderful Life popped into her mind. “Are you my guardian angel?” she asked. Another laugh. “Wrong Christmas movie. No, think of me as a kind of emissary.”“Emissary?”“We know you’re Nice. Sometimes it’s just necessary to send someone to find out just how nice you are.”Stephanie shook her head. “Emissary from whom?”The old woman just smiled. “You know, Stephanie.”“But that’s impossible.”“Nothing is impossible. Haven’t you noticed that we’ve been traveling for nearly half an hour from Main and haven’t even reached Ravenswood? If anything is impossible, that should be. But time isn’t really important to us. If it were, he couldn’t get around to everyone in one evening, could he?”Stephanie knew what the woman was suggesting, but it was absurd. There’s no such thing as Santa Claus.“That’s where you’re dead wrong, Dear,” the woman said, responding to the statement Stephanie had not made aloud.“What?”“There is a Santa Claus.”Stephanie tried to remember if she had eaten anything odd that afternoon, anything that could account for the bizarre hallucination she was obviously experiencing, but she could think of nothing. She stared at the old woman, trying to make any of this make sense. “Right,” she said. “And he’s the Spirit of Christmas and he’s going to make all of my wishes come true even though he’s been missing from my life for years.”“We’ve been over that,” said the old woman.Stephanie grew irritated. “You expect me to believe in Santa Claus. You realize that doing that is practically the stereotype for crazy, don’t you?”“Not crazy. Childlike. And come on: you are dressed in an outfit you got when you were fifteen.”Stephanie was exasperated. For the first time, she lost her temper with the woman and raised her voice. “Stop that! How can you know things like that? Have you been stalking me or something?”The old woman’s smile, consistent until now, dropped. She looked sad, as if she’d just lost an important contest. Slowly, she shook her head. “I’d hoped that, since you intentionally maintained so many vestiges of innocence, you might— But of course not. The others were right. 27 is too old to rescue.”“Rescue?”“That’s why I’m here, Stephanie. But he let this test go on far too long and now you’re way too jaded.”The old woman started gathering her things.“What are you doing?” Stephanie asked, feeling an unaccountable panic at the thought of this woman’s too-soon departure.“Leaving. You’ve made up your mind.”“Oh come on!” Stephanie practically yelled. “That isn’t fair. You just sprung all of this on me. I need a chance to process it. And you’ve got to admit it makes no sense at all. You claim he’s real, but the North Pole is just ice sitting on top of an ocean; no one lives there. And what about the fact that parents do buy the presents marked ‘From Santa’? That’s demonstrably true. I was able to find where they hid them from the moment I discovered that he...”“...didn’t really exist? You can say it. We’re all used to it. I won’t take offense and neither will he. The answers to your questions are easy: you people said he lived at the North Pole; he never said that, and he doesn’t. It’s way too cold up there anyway. And he always sneaks his gift in with the rest: if parents notice it (and you’d be surprised how many don’t) they write it off as some mystery relative fulfilling the child’s wish.”Stephanie shook her head. “This is ridiculous.”“Is it more ridiculous than living your life as an unhappy number cruncher when you had other dreams, like that acting bug, you wish you had pursued?”This was too much, and Stephanie snapped again. “How can you know that about me?”“I know everything about you, Stephanie. It’s in my job description.”“And what is your job exactly?”“Elf.”This was getting more and more absurd by the second. “I thought elves were, like, small?”The old woman laughed. “Some of us, yes. The toymakers, for sure. But what do you think Santa himself is? Human? Living for hundreds of years? Some elves are just bigger than others is all. And when he needs to send emissaries into the world, he sends the ones who will blend better.” They sat in silence for a few minutes while Stephanie processed everything she had just heard and the old woman waited patiently.“OK. Suppose I believe all of this—” Stephanie began, but the old woman interrupted her.“You do,” she said simply. Stephanie sighed. “OK. Say I do. What now? I mean, I still don’t understand why you’re here.”The old woman smiled. “To answer that letter from so long ago,” she said.Stephanie’s eyes went wide. “You mean you can take my incontinence away?”“Yeah, I was fibbing about the miracle thing. He can grant them. It’s a once per lifetime deal though and only for the Very Nice, but you qualify. If you still desire it.”“Of course I do!”“Not so fast,” said the old woman. “You’re old enough to know that everything has a cost and there are always choices to be made. I’ve listened carefully to you and I’m going to offer you three choices. Don’t decide on a whim. Think it through. Tonight, before you go to sleep, make your decision; it will be so when you awaken.”Heart pounding, Stephanie asked, “What are the choices?”“First choice: Santa will indeed remove your incontinence. But the price you pay for that is that every other aspect of your life remains unchanged. You will still be 27 and stuck in a job you hate, staring at decades of pushing numbers in an accounting firm.”“And the other choices?”“Second choice is a different life, the one you’d have had if you had chosen the road you didn’t take. I don’t know what that road was. Maybe it was acting; maybe it was something else you discovered in college. Whatever it was, you entertained it for at least a while and abandoned it. If you choose this way, you’ll awaken to what life would have been if you’d made that choice instead. You will still need diapers, but you’ll most likely enjoy your life more.”“And my third option?”“That is a major reset. There were only going to be two options, but you slipped so easily into seventh grade tonight that it got me thinking I should offer that to you. So your third option is a return to seventh grade, with all of high school ahead of you to try out anything you’d like, including acting or whatever, building a different kind of resumé to send to colleges than the one you had before. Again, you’d still be incontinent, but your life will be very, very different by the time you reach this age again.”Stephanie looked intently at the old woman. “Can you tell which is better?”She shook her head. “That is not for me to say. It’s for you to make happen as life happens to you. Anyway, this is my stop.”Stephanie found that the train was slowing down. The old woman gathered her things for real and stood up as Stephanie considered everything she had just been told. As she was getting ready to head through the exit doors, Stephanie spoke. “Why me?”“Oh, you’re not the only one,” the old woman said with a smile. “But sometimes it does take us awhile to get to all of the Christmas wishes we receive. Yours took fifteen years because Santa wanted to know who you’d become first. As I said, he only grants miracles to the Very Nice. He likes what he sees.”With that, the old woman pushed the button on the double doors, which parted with a whoosh, and she vanished between them as they closed. As the train left the station, Stephanie watched her walking away with her parcels.

(1)The weatherman on Channel 7 had forecast snow for this evening— “4-6 inches falling from 7PM until about 2AM” in that absurdly cheery voice, as if everyone watching was just dying to get out there and do even more shoveling—but that wasn’t going to stop Stephanie from getting where she needed to go. Not tonight. Tonight was just too important to her. Oh, there had been other occasions she had blown off due to snow, to be sure; just last week, for example, she had decided not to go to Ali’s party when the storm hit just during rush hour. And last winter she had been practically a shut-in; aside from work, she didn’t venture into the winter weather at all. Thank goodness someone invented grocery deliveries. But tonight was the office Christmas party, and just about everyone believed that Justin was going to propose to Stacy, and she wasn’t going to be the one who missed it. Not after all of the office drama and gossip over the last six months. No way.“Looks like Mommy’s going to be very cold tonight,” she said as she rubbed her little calico, Willow, behind the ears. The cat purred her appreciation. “No, I don’t want to leave you, but that’s how it goes.”It was, actually, a huge concession for Stephanie Alder to be heading out into the snowfall and temperatures in the teens. Stephanie Alder hated winter with a passion so hot she was always amazed it wasn’t enough to warm her up all by itself. Once, when she was a child, she had contentedly built snow forts and skied and skated, but those days were so far behind her she could hardly remember them at all. Now her skis had been given to charity and her skates hadn’t been sharpened in years, and she didn’t even build snowmen in the park with her little niece and nephew when her sister visited. Chicago’s winter chill had defeated her, made her less adventurous. Stephanie wasn’t one of those wishy-washy Chicagoans who complain about the weather in every season, either. She detested those people. It wasn’t reasonable, she thought, to live here and constantly complain about the weather. It’s OK to hate one season, but not all of them. She had long ago decided she was a warm weather girl: give her sunny and 80° and she was a happy camper, and if it happened to climb into the 90s, well, there was always air conditioning. But the winter? It was brutal and nasty and unforgiving. She dreamed of moving somewhere like southern California where it was warm all year long. Her friends always said she would miss the changing of the seasons, but she thought: if I want to see colored leaves, I know where the airports are. Truth be told, though, it wasn’t just the bitter cold itself that Stephanie hated. She hated how her diapers always chilled so quickly and felt so awful. Stephanie had been bladder incontinent since birth and used diapers all the time to control the leakage. On a warm day, all she needed to do was switch to a cloth-backed brand to feel comfortable. In the cold, nothing worked. She’d be warm for a few minutes right after going, but the cold air would take over and soon she’d be walking or sitting in something that felt as if it had been in a refrigerator. And God help her if a diaper leaked in the winter. It had happened more than once, leaving her with a stream of iced urine running down her leg under her pants or, oh God!, leggings. She’d experienced that enough for one lifetime.It had been a problem all of her life, but until she’d moved away from her mother’s Highland Park home into her own Evanston apartment, she didn’t really appreciate just how much her mother had helped her out with it. Of course she’d been changing her own diapers for a long time now, since middle school anyway, but the emotional weight of having to wear them sometimes got to her, and never more so than in the freezing chill of Chicago winter. On cold days as a child, she could count on her mother’s having made hot chocolate to warm her up and having a clean diaper ready. On cold days, even through sixth grade, she let her mother change her; it made her feel somehow warmer and definitely more loved. Once she got to middle school, though, by some unspoken agreement between them the diaperings stopped. It was as if both of them suddenly decided she was just too old for that kind of intimacy. Then cold days grew just a little colder to Stephanie; something warm in her life had vanished. The truth was, however, that there was one thing that warmed Stephanie Alder about cold weather, and that was Christmas time. She believed in Santa Claus long after the other kids her age had stopped believing; the magic of the season meant the world to her. But it wouldn't last. Her ultimate disappointment came in seventh grade. She wrote a letter to Santa asking for only one single gift: freedom from diapers. When it didn’t happen—when she got more clothes and electronics, etc. instead—she finally understood: her friends were right. Santa didn’t really exist after all. She still loved the holiday, but she had to admit some of the magic was gone. And the diapers continued to be part of her daily existence.For tonight she had chosen a particularly thick diaper with teddy bears and other stuffed animals on it; her favorite was a little snow leopard blowing bubbles. She’d found them online back in college and bought them ever since because they were adorable and because they made her smile. Something about this needs to. She knew she’d be drinking at least a bit at the party and hoped she could get by without a change; in fact, as she had often done, she wasn’t even bringing a spare with her so she could go without a purse. No way was she bringing one tonight, not after the last big party she attended when she’d put it down somewhere and couldn’t find it to save her life at the end of the evening. It had taken over an hour and the help of half the party guests to locate it; she wasn’t going through that again. Besides, not having one forced her not to stay too late and helped make life easier as the party wore on: even if someone wanted to make it with a girl in diapers, he wasn’t going to when she was soaking wet, so she was safe from predators. For an emergency, she kept a Depends Silhouette in her coat pocket; it was the only thing she had that was small enough to fit. It would never last her very long, but it would do in a pinch.Since it was a Christmas party, she had decided to get dolled up in red and green. On a whim, she had purchased a pair of Christmas-themed tights with snowflakes sparkling down her legs. Above them, she put on the outfit she had been given when she was only fifteen and now wore just for fun at least once during every Christmas season: a deep green velvet skirt with a velvet top that was red trimmed with gold. If she put a Christmas barrette in her hair, as she did tonight—a shiny one with green, red and gold foil strips layered and slightly fanned out—she thought she looked very cute. In point of fact, as petite as she was, Stephanie Alder dressed for this party was utterly adorable. It was another self-defense mechanism, like the single diaper: she wanted to have fun at this party, but not worry about any negative consequences. This outfit, which had made her look younger when she was a junior in high school, still had the same effect. Then, it was undesirable—what high school girl wants to look like a middle schooler?—but now, since she looked mostly the same as she did back then, it served a new purpose: fending off unwanted advances. It was odd. People knew she was an adult, but when she looked a bit younger, they left her alone. Something within Stephanie’s mind understood that simple algorithm; thus the choice of these clothes tonight.Her girlfriends at work thought it was a cute outfit, though. They’d seen it at a little get-together last year, when she’d worn it (as usual) on a whim, and Gemma had even asked her earlier in the week whether she would be wearing it to the office party.“Of course,” she’d told her. “If I want to enjoy myself without the guys all over me, it’s the best thing I’ve ever found.”The tall brunette had smiled. “I know what you mean. Sometimes I wish I had a choice like that myself. Anything to make myself still look cute but less desirable, you know? I’m a bit jealous of you. I’d love to ask Santa to let me look younger when I wanted to.”“I get that,” Stephanie had told her. “But it’s not always so great when you’re already small. It’s a real pain when they don’t believe me that I’m over 21 at restaurants—I’m almost thirty, for crying out loud—good thing I like Coke so much. Anyway I do hate the meat market thing, so I never even try going to bars.”Gemma shook her head. “But how much of any of it do you really like, anyway?” “What do you mean?”“Oh, you know, the drinking, the showing off for the guys, all of it. You don’t like the meat market. You’ve told me how much you hate the feeling of being sick when you’re too drunk. So i’m just wondering: wouldn’t you just rather have a quieter time, talking maybe, hanging out without the social pressures?”“That went out in seventh grade.”Gemma rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.” “Yeah,” Stephanie said, “Until Santa decides to really make me young again, parties like this are all I have, and I feel I need the extra protection. Hence this outfit.”“Don’t you already have, like, extra protection?”“Very funny.”Gemma was a good friend. She was the first person Stephanie had met when she started at Hemming & Klatch, and they’d hit it off immediately. It almost made the accounting job palatable. Almost. Every single day, though, Stephanie found herself wishing at some point she’d majored in something else. In school she’d liked math, loved working with numbers, manipulating them, seeing the secrets they could conceal. Geometry mesmerized her—all of those shapes governed by predictable fundamental laws! She almost lost her way during a trig class taught by a very poor teacher (if she closed her eyes she could still hear him droning on about sines and secants), but her love was renewed by the joys of calculus, where Mr. McGregor had taught her theoretical math and she’d been in seventh heaven, spinning two-dimensional shapes around on an axis to see what kind of volume they would occupy if they were three-dimensional: God it was fun back when she was first learning that stuff.Who knew that a career in a math-related field would mean a job as dull as dirt? She’d had a nice business teacher in high school, which is why she’d chosen accounting in the first place, but good God she wanted to kill herself every time she walked into the office. And it didn’t help any that the entry level positions were mostly data-crunching. Maybe someday things would change, but she couldn’t see how. Sometimes, she wondered what her life would be like if she had made a different decision, chosen a different direction. At least she had her friends though. Along with Mandy and Jess, she and Gemma always went to lunch together and almost always managed to have a blast. And the three of them were the only people in her life right now to whom she had ever confided about her incontinence. It was either that or try to explain why she never went to the ladies’ room with them. And besides, she felt she could use a bathroom buddy to watch out for others. So she’d told them one evening over drinks at Louie’s and all three of them told her it was no big deal: friends don’t care about silly things like that.But they do care about the outfits you wear to the annual Christmas party, she thought, examining herself in the mirror after yet again transforming herself into the image of someone much younger. “You like it too, don’t you?” she asked Willow, who was once again sidling up to her as she stood and rubbing against her thigh. “Does that velvet feel good to you?”How many times now had she worn this outfit? She had no clue, but she knew one thing: this was going to be the first time she’d worn it to Hemming and Klatch. Last year, her first at the firm, she’d missed the party due to illness. Not tonight. She smiled at her image in the mirror. No way I’d even get into a bar tonight. Good thing the booze was going to be at the party and she didn’t need to pay.Stephanie grabbed the outfit’s final touch, the shiny black flats with the bows at the toes that she’d found at DSW last year that were perfect, put them into a grocery bag, and slipped her feet into a pair of black boots for the journey. The shoes completed the outfit in an innocent, simple way instead of adding a touch of sexuality as heels would have. Then she put on her winter coat, grabbed her keys, her phone, a twenty dollar bill, and her Metra card and shoved them into a pocket, petted the cat once more, and headed out the door. She was bringing only what she absolutely needed. Easy peasy.The weather was every bit as uncomfortable to her as she’d thought it would be, but at least she didn’t need to be out in it for long. The train stop was just down the street both from her apartment and from the office at the other end; if it hadn’t been such a lousy evening she might have braved lighter outer clothing. But the faux fur was her choice for tonight; she wanted to be as warm as she possibly could.A homeless woman stood, shivering, near the train station, a hand extended toward her. She’d seen this woman before; she was often here: she stood hunched over as if from years, but she wasn’t that old. Her tangled, unkempt brown hair hung everywhere all over her face, sticking out from the filthy blue knit cap atop her head. She’d found a winter coat somewhere—Stephanie was sure she didn’t have it last time she was here—but it fit so poorly that she couldn’t zip it up. At least her thick boots looked as if they’d keep her feet warm. They were an odd green color, but they looked nicely lined.“Something to help me eat, Sweetheart?” she said as Stephanie approached. It was clear from the intonation that she didn’t expect anything.Stephanie didn’t answer at first, but she didn’t move on either. She’d found herself entranced by the woman’s eyes, reflected in the light from the train station. One of them was green and the other was very nearly amber, a color she’d never seen on a person before. Willow’s eyes were that color.“Well?” the woman asked.Stephanie realized she’d probably been staring. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s a terrible night to have to be outside. Isn’t there a shelter or something?” The woman smiled. Several of her teeth were brown. “Going there,” she said. “I need to eat first.”Her friends, Stephanie knew, never gave money to the homeless people. “They just waste it,” Jess had said. “Better to buy them food, or donate to shelters.” It was an easy stance to justify except when the weather was this shitty and this broken woman was standing in front of you.She reached into pocket before she remembered what was in there. After a moment’s hesitation, though, she pulled out the twenty. When the woman saw what it was, her eyes grew wide.“Promise me that you’ll get yourself some food and head for the shelter so you can get out of this weather,” she said as she held it out.Taking the money, the woman looked at Stephanie. “You’re an angel, Sweetheart. An absolute angel. God bless you.”As Stephanie entered the station, she turned a backward glance toward the woman. She was still standing where she had been, staring at the departing girl as if she were some kind of miracle.

New Year’s Eve was, truth be told, one of Kendra’s favorite nights of the year. She loved the crowds, the loopy, crazed excitement, the feeling of hopefulness—even though it so often turned into disappointment too quickly thereafter—the drinking, and most of all, the fireworks. There was something pure about thousands of people standing together watching sparkling multi-colored lights and explosions over the lake, something visceral about them counting those last ten seconds in anticipatory unison. She loved it all.It almost made her feel bad to defile it.New Year’s Eve was far better than the 4th of July, as far as the young vampire was concerned. Oh, it was a heck of a lot simpler to get what she wanted when people were wearing less—that was true—but come on: where was the fun in that? Kendra enjoyed the challenge of feeding when it was completely inconvenient to do so, and that’s what she got every December 31st. And every year she searched the crowds for the one person she would invite to join with her in immortality, the person she would offer the Eternal Kiss. There was almost always someone there, some man or woman who had reached the end of their rope and was thinking about ending it all but whose presence at this ancient ritual of new beginnings confirmed for Kendra the conflicts within them. These were usually the people she’d approach, and that didn’t really make her very well-loved in the community.This year, she had been hauled in front of the Grand Vamp Council for creating Neville, but why shouldn’t she have? So he was a little bit of a nerd. So he was a lot suicidal when she met him. So he still lived with his mother at 45. These might have been red flags to someone else, but—as she argued to the GVC—they did not in and of themselves violate any rules. And Kendra, probably more than any other vampire, knew the rules. When you spend your life justthisclose to violating them, you need to know what they are. As to Neville, she had spoken with him at last year’s fireworks and discovered that he was suicidal because he was a 45-year-old nerd still living with his mother. When she offered him The Kiss, he grabbed it eagerly: he didn’t want to die, he just wanted to change his situation, and becoming a vampire certainly would do that.Couldn’t make him less of a nerd, though. Still, even vampires need accountants.He was here, off in the distance. That was one of the problems of creating someone who was less than ideal: you were sort of stuck with them. You always could sense where they were and, if you were not specifically tuning them out, you could sense what they were doing as if they were right next to you. Neville was hunting. No big deal there; lots of vamps hunted during the fireworks. Vampires and pickpockets: you make their jobs so much easier when your back is turned. And Neville was hunting the crowd as she had taught him: take a little bit from each person you select and quickly move on; leave a hypnotic charm on them so they wouldn’t ever even know you were there. If they saw the scars at all later, they’d think they were bitten by insects. Good boy, Neville! And the GVC thought he was—OK, what's this? She listened as he approached his next victim and could hardly believe it. “Now, I hafve to approash verry quietly sho she doezhn’t hear me.”He was talking out loud. And he was apparently drunk. One quick burst of vampiric speed and Kendra had covered the distance between them just as the blonde woman Neville was approaching was turning around. She intercepted him, put an arm around him, and said, “Oh there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” as they disappeared into the rest of the crowd.When they were far enough out of earshot, she turned to him. “What on earth are you doing? Hunting drunk?”He looked puzzled. “I shwear I hafvn’t had a shing to drink. Exshept blood of coursh.”Kendra stopped for a moment, then palm-slapped her own forehead. “Of course! You’ve been feeding on the revelers all night, right?”“Yesh.”She shook her head. “I should have made sure you understood. This isn’t the same as 4th of July: there are a whole lot more drunks in this crowd.”“Whachyou mean?”“I mean I’m just guessing, but I’d say that the alcohol content of the blood you drank is way over the legal limit.”Neville stood there processing. Then every cell in his body seemed to start shutting down at once. Kendra grabbed hold and propped him up. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get you home. Are you still living in that old place with your mom?”“Yesh,” he said, and then fell silent as she speeded them both away from the harbor and out to a dark corner of Ravenswood, where Neville’s mom had bought a townhouse years earlier, a nice enough place despite the neighborhood. By the time they got there, he had regained most of his composure and felt embarrassed about what had happened.“Oh God. I can’t even have a simple New Year’s Eve feast without causing all sorts of trouble.”She smiled. “No harm done. And you seem to have recovered already. Don't you just love being a vampire? Takes a human at least a day and a half to get rid of a drunken episode like that one.""Still, it shouldn't have happened. I was stupid.""There are tricks, Neville. You can’t be indiscriminate on nights like this. You have to observe the people first. Make sure you know what you’ll be getting.”“I should have thought of that.”“Probably. But you’ll learn. Right? Just like you’ve been practicing mind control?”He beamed. “You’d be impressed with me,” he said. Then, remembering how she’d found him tonight: “Well, maybe not all the time.”He looked at Kendra and suddenly couldn’t take the thought that she was merely indulging him. He needed to show her something, some evidence. And he knew precisely what. “Seriously,” he said, “I really have been working on it. Come downstairs; I’ll show you.”He didn’t give her a chance to say no, instead heading for the doorway to his basement and starting down the too-dimly-lit stairwell. “Got to get better light in here one of these days, but I guess it doesn’t much matter for us.”Halfway down, Kendra stopped him. “Neville, you’re not holding a human captive down here, are you? Because you know that’s against all sorts of rules.”Neville’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “What?! No! Not at all! Oh my— No! I would never— And my mother would kill me!”“OK, Neville, calm down. I was just asking. So what is down here?”“Just what I’ve been working on to practice my mind control.” He reached the bottom of the stairwell and flipped the light switch. “Do you know the saying, It’s like herding cats?”She nodded. “Sure. It’s an indication of just how impossible something is to accomplish.”His smile was enormous. “Well, I’ve gone one better. I haven’t only herded them. I’ve coordinated them.”They stepped into the large open room. In its center was a three-tier set of risers about six feet in length. Everywhere about the room, cats were lounging or moving about. “Now watch this,” he told Kendra.He walked over to a podium set up in front of the risers, picked up a baton, and tapped it twice on the podium. Instantly, every cat in the room moved toward the risers, quickly assembling in neat rows on the three levels.“Oh my God,” Kendra said. “That is amazing!”Neville looked at her, his smile now encompassing his entire face. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” He tapped the podium four times, and the cats began mewing and meowing “Silent Night” on pitch and in rhythm, even hitting the highest notes (such as they are) on key. Then they started another verse, but this time multiple cats sounded at once, making chords.“Holy shit!” Kendra was utterly blown away. After they’d finished their final verse, she said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re doing that with mind control?”He shrugged. “Anyone can,” he said. “I think it’s just that no one has thought to try or taken the time to figure it out. I mean cats are a lot less complicated than humans, so it stood to reason that controlling their minds would be a heck of a lot easier. That’s why I decided to practice with them at first. But when I found I could control a bunch of them at a time…”“You decided to start a choir?”He laughed. “It just took a bit of time to set it all up. I recorded their voices, analyzed them for pitch and length of sound, and then I broke down ‘Silent Night’ into a simple algorithm that I could use to match the cats to the notes and then to create chords.”Kendra laughed out loud. “Neville the Nerd strikes again!”“I guess we don’t wander far from our roots.”“Can they do anything else?”“Funny you should ask. I’ve just finished teaching them ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ You know Pastor Jameson? At the Unitarian Church? He’s going to play a tape of them in the service the day after tomorrow. They are going to be a bona fide cat church choir!”Kendra put her hand on his shoulder. “Neville, you never cease to amaze me. Now if I could just get you to stop making stupid mistakes…”He blushed. “I know, I know.”“Now I’m going back out there. There is still plenty of time to find my Eternal Kiss of the Year. But as for you…”“Go to bed. I’ve got you.”They climbed the steps back to the front foyer and Kendra reached for the door. “Cat choir,” she said. “You drive me crazy, but you do keep surprising me.”And she was gone.Several minutes later, she let herself slow down as she mingled with the now slowly dissipating crowd at the waterfront. She wasn’t really thirsty anymore; she’d had plenty before dealing with Neville and his drunken foolishness. No, she only had one agenda now. She leaned back against a tree, listening to conversations both close by and farther away.“—spend the day watching bowl games”“—outdid themselves again; how does this display get better each year?”“—go back to my place and”“—think both the conservatives and the liberals need to”So many vapid conversations. Kendra had all night to listen to them if she wanted, but she wasn’t actually sure she could take it. After half an hour of one insipid conversation after another, with no sign that anyone here was worth the Eternal Kiss, she thought she might as well pack it in. After all, she’d learned tonight that last year’s experiment had been a rousing success; maybe that was enough for one night. Besides, most years were like this: disappointing. Which is why Kendra only had created nine offspring in all of the time she'd been a vampire. She may flout the rules, but she wasn't indiscriminate: a person had to be worthy.It’s always when you are about to give up that you find what you didn’t even know you were looking for. Telepathy was critical to the skill of mind control for vampires: knowing the person’s thoughts made it easier to control them. By this point, many decades after being created, it was second-nature to Kendra. Even without trying, she suddenly read clearly the thoughts of a young woman waving goodbye to a few friends and starting to walk toward the el. At first, she was not sure why her mind was settling on this woman, who, from a quick mental inventory, did not at all fit her usual profile and in fact would thrill the GVC, but then she focused on the woman’s thoughts. And in the mind of this young woman she saw a single image clearly: a wet diaper.Words flew by associated with the image: wet, clammy, cold, uncomfortable, chafing, clumping… Kendra had no doubt whatsoever that the diaper in question was worn by the young woman, not by someone she had charge over. And she also had no doubt that the woman wearing it needed it.“Oh my!” she said softly as she sought the woman in the crowd, filtering through the thoughts of hundreds of other people until she landed on the face of the person she had overheard. The woman was indeed young—early twenties if Kendra were to guess, which would make her roughly the same age as Kendra was when she herself had been created, the age her immortal body still was. She watched the woman closely, examining her. She was a little taller than the petite Kendra, maybe 5’4 or so, with luxuriant brown hair flowing out from beneath a knit hat. Her white down parka framed her well against the crowd, letting Kendra watch from a distance without seeming overly interested. She wore maroon mittens that matched her hat and brown furry boots that rose above her jeans.And, Kendra knew, that wet diaper that she would dearly love to change out of, if there were anywhere out here in Grant Park to do so. Allison. Her name was Allison; Kendra caught a flash of it in her thoughts. And Kendra’s world narrowed, for the moment, to just one other person, as she explored exactly who this Allison was who had so affected her.24 years old. Med student. Only child. Lost her parents in an accident when she was 13 that left her incontinent. Independently wealthy because of insurance, inheritance, and a lawsuit against the other driver. Not at all my usual type. Loves cats. I should introduce you to Neville. You two would hit it off. Lives on her own near Second City in a loft. Flashes. Snippets of a life flying through the woman's mind as she made her way to the train that would take her home. She pictured home again, and this time Kendra thought to clock the address. Allison’s phone rang.“Hey,” she said, walking as she talked. “Haven’t you had enough of me tonight?”There was a short pause. “You’re kidding...No, I’m really beat. If I stayed out any later I think I’d fall asleep on the street and die of hypothermia...Yes, it’s a thing. I’m just going to head straight home, pour a glass of wine, pick up my book, and let Clarice curl up on me and purr to her heart’s content.”Clarice. She’d named her cat Clarice, and Kendra caught unmistakable reference images of Jodie Foster as she thought of the calico. A young independent woman wanting to learn, acting on her own, discovering. Oh, she liked this Allison very much. And then of course there were the diapers: when was the last time she’d happened on anyone wearing them? And she’d never come across anyone like that who was also worthy of the Eternal Kiss, but this Allison seemed to be, in the traditional way, not in the Kendra way.If she wants it. If she’d accept the tradeoffs (the darkness, the need for blood) for the payouts (all of that strength and speed, immortal youth, telepathy and other mind powers, perfect memory, instant cures for mostlong-term physical ailments), Kendra could show her something far beyond her limited human understanding. Vampire strength would not rebuild a damaged bladder—the diapers would remain—but in every other way Allison would become a kind of god.As Allison descended into the subway station, Kendra made up her mind. With the kind of speed that made her only a blur to others on the street, she raced up Michigan, heading to North Avenue. It was only a few minutes’ run at high speed, and she was there, she knew, long before Allison’s train would be. She walked down Wells until she found the complex that housed Allison’s loft, and she waited.She began to hear the young woman’s thoughts about fifteen minutes later, though it was clear she was still at least five minutes away. She knew how she was going to play this. If Allison was who she thought her to be, all she would need was a small nudge, not full out control. If not, then she’d just go home. Diapers or not, you don’t offer the Kiss to an unworthy person. All of her misfits had been worthy; she’d always made sure of that before she offered. Her mind drifted back to Jasmine. Oh, Jasmine. Promiscuous and passionate, the girl had made up for low self-esteem by seemingly screwing her way through every guy in New Orleans by the time Kendra met her. She took them to bed as quickly as she could, sometimes without even a formal date first, and left them exhausted and drained. And Kendra did mean "left"; come morning, Jasmine was always simply gone. For all of that, though, she still could have been worthy of The Kiss (and, given that low confidence, Kendra was actually damn impressed by her actions) if it had not been for the fact that Kendra had dragged from her memories that she had often stolen money from these men before leaving. Promiscuity was one thing; criminality was something else altogether. Still, Kendra even today thought of the girl from time to time.Allison's thoughts interrupted her reverie; she was close. When Kendra saw the young woman coming, she began her play. First, she affected being extremely cold. It was indeed a quite chilly night, though of course vampires are immune to such things. She shivered and her teeth chattered and she actually allowed her skin to turn a bluish color as she huddled near one of the open decorative flames in the entryway. There was no way for Allison not to notice her, so it disappointed her tremendously when the young woman walked right on by, not even slowing down, her thoughts preoccupied with her own issues. Maybe she's not who I thought. And then, just when she was raising her key to unlock the outer door and Kendra was giving up, a new thought entered the young woman's mind: an image of the chilled woman she had almost ignored.She turned her head and looked back, and Kendra sent her the smallest of thoughts: your loft is large and warm. By the time she had returned to where Kendra stood, the thought had blossomed into an invitation. “Excuse me, but you look so cold. Do you want to step inside for a little while and warm up?”Kendra couldn’t help smiling. You should never invite strangers into your home, Allison. You never know what they might be. But Allison had passed the test, and Kendra had no intention of harming her. Together they walked into the building.Inside the warm lobby, Allison said, “I’m Allison. I’m a med student. Are you OK? Why were you standing out there freezing?”Kendra kept shivering—it seemed too early to stop—and said, with a soft smile, “Kendra. You can s-see I’m not d-dressed for the cold. I need to pay better attention to the weather.”Allison nodded. “You poor thing! Where do you live?”“Lincoln Park.”“So not far from here?”“No,” Kendra said, starting to drop her affected stutter. “I just needed to s-stop by those fires and try to warm myself for a bit.”A smile came to Allison’s face. “I know: let me make you some coffee. That will warm you up.”Kendra returned the smile. “That would be nice,” she said.An elevator ride, two minutes, and a whirring Keurig later, Kendra was sipping a hot black mug of coffee. Another minute and Allison joined her and motioned her to sit at the table. Allison took a couple of sips and then said, “I hope you’ll excuse me for a moment. I’ve been out all evening at the fireworks and nature’s calling.”Kendra smiled. “Take your time.”Allison disappeared into the master bathroom to, Kendra knew, finally change out of that cold, clammy diaper. The wave of relief emanating from that area of the house a moment later was practically palpable. While she was sitting alone, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eyes: the small calico cat.“Hey, Clarice,” she said. “Come here, Sweetheart.” A little mental nudge and the cat was on her lap. A couple of minutes later, Allison re-emerged, smelling faintly of baby powder, and sat down with Kendra.“Oh my God, she’s never been that friendly before!”Kendra smiled. “Just call me the cat whisperer.”“Her name is Clarice. Like Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. Because she’s so curious and independent, not that you can tell right now.”The cat sat there purring and purring as Kendra let one hand drop down to pet it between the ears.“That is amazing,” said Allison. “So, Kendra, tell me about yourself.”She’s looking for a new friend, Kendra observed. She just might get one. “Well, I guess you could call me a sort of missionary, but don’t worry: you haven’t opened the door to a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon or anything like that.” Just a vampire.Allison laughed, sipping her coffee. “So what, then?”Kendra too took a long sip before continuing. “Well, you know how religions are always telling you that they have the right way to get to heaven?”“Yeah. It drives me crazy. As if any of them knows.”“Right. That’s exactly right: how can any of them know what is ultimately unknowable? All that is knowable is here on Earth, and we sadly take it for granted.”Allison grew animated. “You’re so right! Especially right now in this country: we’re ignoring climate change, we’re systematically tearing down environmental protections that have been in place for decades, we’re throwing away the Endangered Species Act. It makes me so mad!”“Me too,” said Kendra. “But I belong to a group of people who are actively trying to do something about it.”“How?”“You can’t fight the system unless you’re a part of it. We’re trying to get inside. Then we can control what happens.”Taking another sip, Allison shrugged. “You must not be very effective.”Kendra laughed. She really liked this girl. “No. No we’re not, not yet. There aren’t enough of us and we need to remain in the shadows or we’d be persecuted. They don’t really understand us. But when the time comes that we can rise, believe me they will have a fight on their hands.”Kendra and Allison both finished their coffee, and Allison brought the mugs into the kitchen. Clarice followed her, apparently looking for a snack. “So you’re a recruiter?”Kendra nodded. “I am.”“What does one need to do to join?” Allison asked, putting some cat treats in a small bowl for Clarice.“Well, you need to pass a sort of test, part of which by the way you have already passed. And then you have to choose to join of your own free will.”Allison re-entered the dining room and sat back down. “Wait—I’ve passed a test? When did that happen? And what’s this about choosing?”Kendra smiled gently. “I’ll explain. But first: have you ever wondered what it would be like to have superpowers? Like you could run as fast as the Flash or lift as much as Supergirl or read minds like Professor X? Did you ever wish you were invulnerable?”Allison rolled her eyes. “Of course. Didn’t everyone? But you’re not going to try to tell me that what you’re selling will make me a superhero. I mean it’s been fun, Kendra, but I swear I’ll bounce you out the door right now.”“No, no,” said Kendra. “Not a superhero.” Then, before Allison could even give out a sigh of relief, she added, “but not entirely unlike one either.”Allison shook her head sadly and pulled her hand out from under the table to reveal a stun gun. “Damn. I thought maybe I had made a new friend, but it turns out you’re just some cult wacko. I need you to leave.”Kendra looked at the gun and smiled. She hadn't been listening to the girl's thoughts. “Damn, you’re impressive. That’s the second test.”“What the hell are you talking about?”“First you invited a stranger upstairs; now you’re showing that you are strong enough to take a stand by kicking me out. There is only one more test, and that is the choice itself.”“You do realize you sound like a complete lunatic, don’t you?”This elicited actual laughter from Kendra. “I usually do on these nights. OK. Give me five more minutes. If you still want me to leave then, I will, and you’ll never see me again. Fair?”Allison thought for a moment, looked down at the stun gun she still held, and agreed.Kendra tried to sound as sincere as possible. “Now I’ve given myself a deadline, so I need to ask you just to listen, OK?”“OK.”“First of all, I wasn’t kidding just now. I have all of those abilities I mentioned and more. And on top of that, I’m immortal. There is very little that can harm me. Your stun gun really wouldn't do much good.”“Oh come on!” said Allison.“I’m serious. Bring me a knife.”“As if.”“Right. I guess you’re not ready to trust me with that. Well I’ll have to do this the hard way.” She reached across with her right hand, and with one sharp nail, tore a long, deep cut in the flesh of her left arm. Allison jumped, shrieking. “Just watch,” said Kendra, holding the arm steady. Both of them watched as the wound slowly sealed itself back up and then disappeared as if it had never been there.“Holy shit!” said Allison, sitting down.“Yeah,” said Kendra. “Now, see that remote control over on the table by the couch, near where Clarice is lying?”“Yes.”In what seemed to Allison like no time at all, Kendra all but invisibly left the table, got the remote, returned, and held it out.“Here it is.”Allison looked shocked. “That can’t happen.”“Yet it did,” Kendra said. “I told you: I have all of these abilities and so does everyone in my group. And so will you if you join us.”“My God, YES!” Allison practically shouted.“Wait,” said Kendra. “This is about informed consent. You don’t know everything about us yet.”With that, Kendra sent Allison images of herself feeding earlier that same night as she moved from one person to another, never taking too much. But still…she could see revulsion in Allison’s eyes.“What...are...you?”“You’d call us vampires, so that’s what we call ourselves. But we’re not really like the myths. We can’t change into bats or anything. We don’t drink to kill or to control, just to survive. We use mind control to make it acceptable for the people to help us out and we take far less from each than they’d give to a blood bank. Two or three a night, as you’ve seen, and we’re pretty full.”“You’re a vampire.”“Yeah. Try to stay with me here. There is almost nothing that can hurt us. We’re immune to diseases. Anything we already had heals. The stakes through the heart thing? Bunk. I mean it would probably hurt, but it would just heal. Pretty much the only thing that can kill us is sunlight, and with that we’d actually need to sort of camp out in it. I mean it doesn’t burn our flesh to ashes like on Buffy. It slowly puts us to sleep. And if there is too much exposure we just don’t wake up.”“You’re a vampire.”“You’re kind of stuck on that one, aren’t you? Here, look: see my canines? Sort of big, aren’t they?”“You’re a vampire.”Before Kendra could say anything else, Allison interrupted. “No, I just needed to say it out loud a few times to get my head around it. You’re a vampire, and you...want me to be one as well?”“It’s called the Eternal Kiss. That is something the myths get right. You need to drink from my blood after I nearly drain you. There’s no danger: we can all feel when the heart starts slowing down, and it’s at that point that we pull back and allow you to drink. The combined act creates you as a vampire sired by me, which means we are forever connected. But you have to understand: technically you'll be dead. That's why you won't age any more. Some bodily functions obviously still occur, but during the change your heart stops beating forever. It's part of the tradeoff. And you’d be giving up daylight except for short spurts. You’d be giving up the company of many of your good friends for that of people you have not yet met. You’d be accepting a life based on the need to drink blood. We can eat and drink other things—and by the way they taste fantastic with our heightened senses—but only blood can keep us alive. And you’d be accepting a life lived in the shadows. You know your own reaction to my being a vampire; well that is everyone’s reaction, but multiply it by ten.”Kendra caught a stray thought from Allison: I can finally get rid of my diapers!“Allison?” she said. “That won’t happen.”“I didn’t say anything,” Allison protested.Kendra’s smile was sad. “Telepathy? Professor X? I’ve known about them all night. But I’m afraid that won’t change. The kind of bladder damage you have doesn’t heal even with vampiric powers. We can re-bond our bodies with a lost limb, even a head, but we can't undo the damage caused to tissue while we were alive. It's one reason we have to be careful who we choose for the Kiss: don't want to create some vampire with eternal painful cancer or something.”Allison’s face fell. “But...how can you be sure my bladder won’t heal?”Kendra shook her head. “I suppose I could be wrong,” she said, “but all I know is it didn’t heal for me.”There was silence for a moment in the room. Then Allison said, “You wear diapers.” It wasn’t a question; she knew the truth of it.“Same as you: accident when I was little. I fell from a tree.”“And you look about my age,” said Allison. “Depends how you count it. I’m 24, yes. But I was born in 1943.”“So you’ve been diapered for…”“This is my 80th year.”Allison looked despondent. “Doesn’t it get to you?“Used to, back when they were cloth and I had to pin them on and use huge rubber pants over them. These days? It’s all so easy I hardly think about it. But I am honest enough to admit there is something missing in my life in not having anyone around who knows what I’m going through.”“Is that why you chose me?”Kendra shrugged. “It drew me to you, sure. But it would not have been enough if you hadn't turned out to be...well...you.”Allison sat silent. “Do I need to decide tonight?”“I’m afraid so. The rules say that if you refuse I have to wipe all of this from your memory.”“You can do that?”“Professor X, remember? And as I said we need to keep to the shadows. Oh, I almost forgot a new perk! If you join us, I’ll show you a church choir made up of cats!”Allison burst into laughter. “Now I know you’re kidding me.”“Believe me I’d have said the same thing before tonight, but it’s true. Just another wild and crazy advantage of being one of the Undead. Now while you’re thinking, may I use your bathroom to change?”“What? Oh! Of course!”Kendra made short work of her diaper and returned to find Allison sitting on the couch sipping red wine. “I want to remember what it tastes like as a human,” she said.“So you’re joining us?”She nodded and downed the glass.“Don’t worry about the wine. As I said, vampiric senses are all heightened. I think you’ll find you taste far more in wine than you ever have before. Most of the world’s greatest sommeliers are vampires.”Allison looked up quizzically.“It’s true,” said Kendra. “Now, stand up, OK? I don’t want to spill any blood accidentally on your sofa.”Allison stood and moved slowly to Kendra’s side. “Don’t be afraid,” the vampire said. “When I tell you to drink, drink until you can’t anymore. You won’t hurt me. After that, you’ll fall asleep. Your body will change while you’re sleeping. You'll die as a human and and you’ll awaken as one of us. You’re certain you want this?”Allison nodded.Kendra smiled. “The Eternal Kiss, from me to you and back.”She pulled Allison close and sank her teeth into the young woman’s neck, drawing in deeply as she felt them enter the jugular. She drank for several minutes until she felt Allison’s heart slowing down, then pulled herself back. Quickly, she took her nail and slit her arm again, this time offering it to Allison. “Drink, Allison.”Allison latched on like a newborn to her mother’s nipple and sucked for all she was worth. The blood was viscous, but not as much as she had feared, and she found she could take it in easily. Eventually the motion tired her, or she felt full, or something, and she stopped and slipped into a deep coma-like sleep.Kendra pulled out her cellphone and opened an app: "GVC App." “Where is the registration of newbies section? Oh, here it is. A-l-l-i-s-o-n W-e-n-d-t. 2-4.”She looked over to where the new vampire was sleeping through the change. “We’re going to have some good times together, Allison Wendt, 24. I know it. Welcome to my world.”##

I'm thinking that, with the new bad guys, you've finally given us someone to get shot... Small error, Sofia: “So she’s just a betweener?” Amanda asked. “She’s still considered an Amazon,” Amanda said,

I love the world-building here as well as all of the characters and their interconnections. A remarkable job, Personalias. I hope to be able to read more of it in the future.

Thank you, CDfm. :-)

Guess I succeeded at least for somebody. :-) Seriously, thanks, ozziebee. My stories never seem to be the ones that elicit a lot of comments, but I want to believe there are indeed people out there reading and enjoying them. :-)

You two have definitely outdone yourselves. It is a great story with either ending. :-)