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I hate the title I finally settled on, but titles aren't my strongest area. I don't sleep very well and often times I lay awake and think of things to write, this is one of those things. If anyone likes this I'll share more of my work, if not I'll slink back into my cave of weirdness. ?? Reliving By: TheUnknownAuthor It was the thunder that woke me up the first time, it changed to other things at various points, but it was the crack of thunder that did it initially. My eyes shot open and I looked around my room in a blurry eyed panic, the inky darkness giving little to ease my anxiety. My eyes came to the nightlight on the other end of the room, the Little Mermaid themed one that I’d gotten for Christmas the previous year, Ariel and Sebastian smiling warmly as the glow behind their faces cast enough light to show me the path to my bedroom door. I looked around the bed, breathing a sigh of relief that it was my big girl bed this time. I wasn’t always so lucky, finding myself back in the crib I’d given up years earlier more times than I cared to remember, trapped in the sleeping cage of my infancy forced to wait helplessly until the end came creeping into the room. Shoving the blankets off me, more Little Mermaid images adorning them, barely recognizable in the dim nightlight wash, I scooted to the end of the bed and tentatively peeked over the side to the wood floor, wondering if I should look under the bed this time before planting my feet on the ground. With a deep breath I pushed myself from the bed so I landed a foot or so from the bed, out of reach of anything that might be lurking beneath the big girl bed I’d been so proud to earn. The slip resistant pads on the bottoms of the feet of my pajamas made small sticky vinyl ripping sounds on the wood floor as I crept across the room to the door that was slightly cracked this time. The door creaked softly as I slowly opened it enough to allow my small frame to slip through the gap into the hallway beyond. A shiver ran up my spine, it always did when I saw the hallway, the length of it seeming impossibly long to my diminutive form. The photos that lined either side of the hallway told the story of a happy family, my family, beginning with my parents when they were dating near where I stood, their smiles genuine and hopeful for the bright and prosperous future ahead of them. Wedding photos were next, my parents with long dead relatives and forgotten friends, still happy and ready for the future. The bathroom was coming up on my right, the first real test of my bravery. The nightlight inside cast a dim glow inside, enough to allow me to see the door was open this time, a good sign. I crept close to the frame and took a quick look inside, breathing a sigh of relief at the emptiness within. Moving slowly, I entered the room and picked up the little pink stool in the corner and carried it to the vanity and set it on the furry mat before ascending to get a look in the mirror. I turned my head from side to side as I tried to discern my age, somewhere between seven and nine given the length of my hair, still a mess from sleeping, and the lack of a gap where my front teeth hadn’t come in yet. I felt my face flush as I looked at the pink footed pajamas I wore and finally acknowledged the clammy bulge around my waist, the timeline jumbled worse than usual this time around. A crash somewhere else in the house made me jump, the clamminess around my waist warming as I turned and descended the step stool and moved to the bathroom door to look down the hallway to the stairs, a light coming from the lower floor, casting various shadows up to the landing. Moving back into the hallway I could see the pictures of my birth and various images chronicling the assorted firsts of my life. I focused my attention on the floor as I continued on, knowing the pictures would start distorting around this point of the hallway, my mother becoming frailer, her smile diminishing more and more until it became the more skeletal grin that I could never forget. My father would remain in the pictures to a point and then disappear entirely, leaving me and my emaciated mother trying to put on brave faces for the camera. By the time I reached the end of the hallway I knew the photos were mixes of me with the various families I’d ended up with over the years, my actual age and development replaced by the stunted and fearful little girl that I saw myself as, retreating to safer and simpler times to protect herself from the various abuses she would experience in the foster care system. The frames of these pictures were crooked, the glass cracked and the pictures beneath curled and faded from the emotional damage they’d absorbed over the years. One of the bedroom doors creaked open behind me down the hall and the expensive manicured nails of my third mother clacked on the wood of the door frame as they walked like spiders to the edge, the fake diamonds faintly glinting in the weak light of the hallway. I smelled the booze wafting from the room even as far away as I was, the scent of Vodka overpowering the acrid scent of my earlier accident. “Samantha.” her voice called softly, dragging each syllable of my name out, her trademark slur acting as a fingerprint leaving no doubt who she was. I looked down the stairs, the normal number replaced by hundreds of tiers, distorted to shapes and lengths never seen in stair design outside of something dredged from the nightmares of Escher. I looked back to the doorway and saw her peeking out at me, her hair matted to the side of her face with sweat and vomit. “Where are you going, Samantha?” she asked, moving into the hallway slowly, crouched down like a cat ready to pounce on its prey, her nails clacking against the floor as a warning to me to stay away, like a rattlesnake would. She was naked, her fake breasts impossibly swollen, the ugly veins she’d done everything to cover standing out prominently as they stiffly wobbled as she drunkenly swayed side to side watching me intently, waiting for me to run from her like I’d done the night I’d found her passed out on the sofa, the night she’d drowned in her own vomit because I ran instead of helping her. “You’re not real.” I whispered to her, my voice tiny and fearful. The sound she made didn’t register as laughter until she threw her head back and cackled like a witch, the hoarse and gurgling she’d started with shattering the silence of the hallway as it evolved into a malevolent chortle. “Not real? Are you sure, dear?” she asked. I nodded my head and began to lower myself to the first stair, keeping her in my line of sight as I crawled backward down the stairs like an unsteady toddler, my feet feeling around uncertainly for the next step and the next until she disappeared behind the wall and I finally allowed myself to breath for the first time in what seemed like hours. More pictures adorned the walls on either side of the stairs, pictures of me in school, sitting alone at recess because I was the weird girl that dressed like I’d escaped from a salvation army preschool. My stomach lurched at the sight of me curled into a fetal position clutching my stuffed penguin, my thumb firmly in my mouth as the girls from my class stood over me pointing and laughing at the girl that had shit her Pampers despite being the same age as them. The next frame was a formal document that was stamped with a still wet “FAILED”, the red of the ink dripping down the paper and permeating the frame to run down the wall like blood. I stopped descending to read the paper, whimpering as I read “Adulthood Proficiency” at the top with check boxes going down the length of it with sections for “Emotional Independence”, “Maturity”, and “Toilet Familiarity”, all angrily scratched through with red ink to the point that the paper was ripping. “Pathetic, isn’t it?” came a voice from the top of the stairs, a husky voice dripping with disdain. I looked up and saw my second father standing there leering down at me beneath his trucker cap, his tobacco stained teeth coming to dagger like points that his serpentine tongue flicked across. “It’s not true.” I told him. He chuckled. “No?” he asked. “Wasn’t it you that cried every damn night because you couldn’t stop pissing your bed?” he added with a sneer. Another step was found by my foot and I lowered myself, moving away from him slowly. “It wasn’t my fault!” I cried out. He knelt down and held out his hand. “It’s time to take your medicine, Sammy, it’s for your own good.” he told me. I shook my head, the phantom sting of beatings long passed welling up beneath the seat of my pajamas causing me to whimper once more as tears welled up in my eyes. “Leave me alone!” I yelled as I moved down another step. He scoffed. “I know the medicine is bitter, Pumpkin, but you know Daddy always kisses your boo boo’s and makes them all better afterward.” he said with a lecherous, hissing chuckle. I shuddered at the memory of his particular brand of aftercare and hurried to move down the stairs faster to escape him, finding no stair too late to stop myself from slipping from the stairs and falling into nothingness, watching him grow smaller and smaller as I fell further than anything possible in reality until I closed my eyes and braced for what I was sure would be a fatal impact. I never landed, I just sort of stopped falling, laying on my back somewhere soft, the scent of fresh laundry filling my nostrils as I breathed in deeply. I heard the tinkling of a wind chime and felt a gentle breeze on my face and my arms and legs, something impossible with the pajamas I’d been wearing a moment earlier. I opened my eyes and saw the backyard of my first home, my real home, my dad was at the grill and my mom was bringing out a lemonade for her and my dad, smiling widely at me as she saw me. “Look who’s up from her nap!” she declared as she set her drink down and walked over to me. She was wearing the floral printed maternity top she’d been wearing in several of the photos leading up to my birth, but the fabric flapped in the breeze freely and regularly pressed against her body, showing no pregnant belly beneath. I looked around to get my bearings and saw that I was in a playpen beneath the large oak tree we had in our yard. A look downward showed me that my pajamas were gone and the only item of clothing I was wearing was one of the cheap brands of adult diapers I’d been supplied with by later families that actually cared to help with my accidents rather than just leave me in soaked and soiled bedding to teach me a lesson. The flimsy pull on garment was barely a step above a hospital gown, my pale, freckled skin visible through the stretched sides. I knew this wasn’t right and I tried to escape, but my mother was already at the side of the playpen bending down to pick me up, cradling me in her arms as if I weren’t nearly the same height as her. “Burgers are almost done!” my dad called. My mother nodded and continued her trek across the yard, arriving at the small semicircle of patio chairs of to the side of the large picnic table we had under the back awning. “Let me just feed Sammy, hon.” she told him. I could hear the sound of running footsteps getting fainter and fainter, the knowledge that my father was gone somehow entering my brain, filling me with deep sorrow that caused me to start crying. “Shh, mama knows.” my mother cooed as she bounced me gently in her arms and slipped the material of her maternity top off her now even more slight frame with ease exposing her graying skin, her overripe breasts leaking a yellowish liquid that reeked of the hospital she’d died in. I struggled to get away as she guided my head closer to her breast, my legs and arms thrashing wildly but futilely as the burst hotdog like nipple entered my mouth and the hot chemotherapy laced milk flowed down my throat. She looked down at me, her flesh tightening against her bones becoming a death canvas, her eyes sinking into her sockets as the whites began to leak down her tearing cheeks. “Baby needs her milk to grow up big and strong.” she wheezed, her breath putrid with the scent of embalming fluid. Her hold on me loosened as she began to dry up and fall away like she was a pile of dead leaves and I rolled off her lap and onto all fours on the concrete, feeling no pain as I hurriedly crawled away, looking back just in time to see the last of her fall through the seat of the patio chair and swirl away on the breeze. The tears were flowing from my eyes as I turned to crawl once more, bumping into a pair of legs. The legs bent and he was smiling at me, the first boy I’d ever had feelings for, James Atkins. He was the TA in my remedial math class in junior college and was the kind of guy my real parents would’ve adored. I looked around the room I now found myself in, the bedroom of his apartment, and saw the bed above me and him reaching out with his strong arms to pick me up from the floor and stand with me, my long legs wrapping around his waist as I continued to sob and mourn the somehow new loss of my mother. “Hey, it’s okay.” he whispered as he rubbed my back softly. “We don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.” he added. When I had actually been in his room we’d started kissing after getting scared during part of the horror movie we’d been watching and hiding my eyes in his broad chest. He’d made a romantic gesture of scooping me up into his arms and carrying me like a new bride to his bedroom. My inexperience with any kind of positive physical intimacy left me unable to move as he gently lay me down on the bed and kissed me once more, his strong frame looming over me bringing about a rush of buried memories that led to a panic attack and me wetting his bed. In this new reality he was softly patting the seat of my diaper, now much thicker and adorned with pastel elephants, the kind I wore regularly now in my real life. My head was against his chest and my eyes were drooping as I listened to his heartbeat. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Sam?” he asked me. I shrugged dreamily. “There’s good stuff here.” I murmured as my thumb entered my mouth. His voice carried his smile to my ears. “Not enough of it though.” he finally said, pausing to gently remove my thumb and replace it with my Cookie Monster pacifier. “You deserve to be happy.” he whispered. I shook my head. “Sammy bad.” I told him. He was shaking his head. “Not bad, just treated bad.” he corrected. “You’re a sweet and innocent girl that just got a shitty set of hands dealt to her, that doesn’t make you bad.” he explained. I opened my eyes and looked up at him with wide eyes. “You said a no no word!” I said in a hushed whisper, afraid to be too loud and alert the authorities to his transgression. His caramel colored eyes sparkled as his perfect white teeth revealed themselves as he smiled widely at me. “I suppose I did, little one.” he told me before he hugged me. The real world James had been worried about me when I’d started having my panic attack, offering to call someone for me, reminding me that I had no one in my life that cared about me that wasn’t court ordered to do so. He’d been obviously disgusted when he learned I’d wet myself on his bed, but he remained kind and calming until I was relaxed enough to let him call me a ride home. I knew things were coming to an end with Daddy James, the feeling of weight being added to the seat of my diaper signaled that the next bit was on its way, and I hugged him as tight as I could until he began to shrink, his skin growing softer as he morphed into my stuffed penguin and I saw that I was now living the picture of myself being bullied that I’d seen on the stairs. “Sammy pooped her diaper!” the circle of girls chanted over and over as the kicked dirt on me and spat on me. This was second grade, all of the girls standing around me had teased and picked on me since kindergarten but this was where the tipping point had occurred. One of the girls knelt down and ripped my thumb from my mouth to grind it into the dirt with her foot, causing me to howl in pain before she jammed the dirty digit back into my mouth so hard I had cuts on my thumb from my teeth. Another girl kicked the seat of my diaper and bruised my tailbone, in addition to squishing my accident out of my diaper into my pants which began to show the leak prominently. “Samantha, do you want to leave?” came an ethereal voice. I shook my head and continued to sob. The ethereal voice sighed heavily. “End session!” it called out. Everything faded away and I was left staring into the empty blackness of the virtual reality goggles I was wearing, until those were removed and my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room I was in and the sympathetic face of my wife. “Hey, kiddo.” she said softly as she wiped my tears away with her fingers and pulled me to her for a hug. I sniffled and hugged her. “Why’d you stop it, Mommy?” I asked her. “I shook my head.” I added. She rubbed my back and kissed the top of my head. “Sammy, Mommy doesn’t like what happens to you in there.” she told me. “It hurts you and makes you sad and afraid and when you’re sad and afraid it makes Mommy sad and afraid.” she explained. I took a deep breath, the smell of wet and messy diaper filling my nostrils before I exhaled in a long sigh. “They’re in there though.” I told her. “My real parents, and sometimes I find them and everything is okay.” I told her. “Remember the time when I woke up and it was real early and my dad came because I was crying and he got me out of my crib and took me downstairs and gave me a bottle on the couch and the fireplace was going and it made the Christmas tree ornaments twinkle and then my mom came down and sat with us and we were a happy family?” I asked, getting a genuine smile from her before she nodded. “I do it for those moments, because those are the one’s I can’t remember on my own.” I confessed. “I know, baby, but so much of what happens to you in there is warped and horrifying.” she said. “Bad things that happened to you get magnified and distorted into the stuff of nightmares, is it really worth going through that on the off chance that you might experience one happy memory that’s buried so far under all that other stuff that you may not experience it at all?” she asked. I looked over at the console that showed that session number sixteen hundred and thirty one had ended and then to her and nodded slowly. “I lived through all of that, the bad and the good,” I started, cupping her face in my hands and gazing into her lovely green eyes. “my mind creates what I see when I’m in there based on the impact those people and experiences had on me when I was growing up.” I felt myself begin to cry again but forced it down, swallowing hard on the dull ache in my throat, “The bad people and the bad experiences aren’t going to hurt me anymore than they did the first time around, but the good ones, they could help me to be better.” I told her. She shook her head. “You can’t be better, sweetie.” she said, pulling me into her arms and hugging me tightly. “Those experiences made you who you are today, and that’s the girl that I married and love with all my heart.” she said as she kissed the top of my head. She sighed softly, “If you don’t want to stop trying to find those moments I’ll be here to hold your hand and pull you out if things get too bad, but I want you to understand that nothing you could find in there will ever be as real and as fulfilling as what you have right here.” she explained. I looked over her shoulder at the display and hugged her tightly. “You’re right.” I said quietly. “Why have I been wasting so many years chasing the memory of a father that abandoned his family when his wife got sick and subjected myself to the pain of losing my mother more times than I could possibly count when all I need is you?” I asked. She rubbed my back softly. “Everyone deals with things differently.” she said. “When I put you to bed I use that to relive moments where I couldn’t think of a witty comeback or to tell that stuck up bitch Jan at work what I really think of the pictures of her cats.” she confessed. “The thing is, those victories and indulgences are fleeting, they don’t fulfill me the way that you do.” she told me. “As long as you understand the difference between reality and what you see in there, you can use it for anything you want.” I giggled softly. “Could I use it to be your Mommy?” I asked. She pulled me away from her embrace and looked at me with a stony, serious face. “You can never, ever use it for that.” she said sternly before breaking into a fit of giggles herself, tickling my sides to snap me out of my concern at her being so serious. “In all seriousness though,” she said as she patted the lumpy seat of my diaper, “I don’t think Mommies need their poopy diapers changed before bed.” she whispered before kissing my cheek and taking my hand in hers, leading me to a clean diaper and a bottle of milk while she read me a story and finally tucked me in for bed. The End