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Like A Baby Written by: Sophie This story was recorded as a bedtime audiobook by FawnyABDL and you can listen to it on The Usual Bet, an ABDL discussion padcast! Here's a link! Premise: Do you ever struggle to get a good night’s rest? Perhaps all you need is a visit from Mistress Sleep. Disclaimers: diapers ---------------------------- You don't want to open your eyes. You nodded off for a moment — a lucky moment — but even in the darkness you know it wasn't for very long. You wait for time to lull you back to sleep, but time starts to do the opposite. You feel warm. The weight of the blanket on you starts to make you uncomfortable, so you kick it off just enough to let air underneath. Your shirt is bunched up underneath you, tugged taught around your shoulder, so you roll onto your side and fix it. Your nose itches, so you scratch it. You roll onto your back and wipe your forehead, though you aren't sweating much at all. You lay your arms out at your sides like a rag doll and try to think about absolutely nothing. You think about absolutely everything. With a sigh, you open your eyes. You tap your watch; maybe you slept longer than you thought. You didn't. But your watch has a notification from Discord. It's something innocuous, something that doesn't need your attention. But as you lay there, you wonder if that person is still online. You wonder how their night is going. If you check your phone now, maybe you can catch them before they go to sleep. So you check your phone. Their status is offline, but you reply anyway. The bubble doesn't change colors. Instead of putting your phone back down, you switch apps. Within the hour, you find yourself switching between the apps for no reason. You have no new notifications and no new posts to scroll through online. News is slower than you are. You finally put down your phone and try again to sleep. "Sleep is a cruel mistress," you mutter to yourself in the darkness. "You think so?" a voice says. You shoot up in bed and adrenaline spills through your body as if a cup of it had been balancing precariously on your chest. Your fight or flight response ticks back and forth at unbelievable speed, unable to land on a decision, until — just as suddenly as it came — it abruptly stops. At the foot of your bed is a woman. Even in the darkness, you can see her as clear as if she were standing in sunlight. But she isn't glowing. She doesn't hurt your eyes. Her face looks soft to the touch, like a doll or a painting, and her features are so delicate that they don't cast any shadows over her cheeks or around her nose. She's wearing a long white gown, embroidered with moons and stars, that falls over her arms and all the way to the floor. And she's tall. She's very tall. You remember that only a second ago, you were afraid. A strange woman appeared in your house, at the foot of your bed; you had every reason to be afraid. But she didn't scare you. Rather, her presence felt as ordinary as night itself. It came as a surprise at first, like when you leave a movie theater and it's still light outside. But then you remember what time is and how time feels, and you aren't scared anymore. "Now now," the woman says slowly, with a smile so slight you aren't even sure it's there. "No need to get up, darling. Rest your head for me, will you?" You do. Without another thought, you slide back down into bed and put your head on your pillow. Your eyes dart to the foot of your bed, but the woman has already come around to the side of it. She sits on the edge of your bed, but her weight doesn't disturb the mattress. "I'm so sorry for my tardiness," the woman continues. Her voice is calm and quiet, just above a whisper. There is no echo or gravity to it, like the winds could carry it a mile away and you would hear it just as clearly. Just listening to her few words lifts your thoughts out of the tar and into the sky where they have room to move. "Who are you," you say, but the inflection is lost at the end. It doesn't sound like a question at all, and you wonder if there is any question in the world worth your energy. "I'm Mistress Sleep," the woman says simply, like you should have known all along. Maybe you had known all along. "Like, the Sandman," you ask, once again without the inflection of a question. But Mistress Sleep understands. She knows the kind of effect she has on people like you. “Something like that," Mistress Sleep says airily, "though I'm not so assertive. I prefer a... gentler touch." And with that, Mistress Sleep runs her fingers across your forehead and pushes your hair out of the way. Her skin feels like a cool blanket on a warm night, or a warm blanket on a cool one. Her fingers slide down your temple, until she can cup your cheek in her palm. She leans over you like a parent tucking in her child, and you feel an overwhelming sense of comfort. For the first time, maybe in your entire life, every muscle in your body relaxes and you sink into the mattress. You aren't even sure you can move, and that thought doesn't scare you even a little. "Hmm..." Mistress Sleep looks down at you with an ounce of wonder. You would never read her expression as worry or concern — no, she's far too content. You know two things instead: the first, something is wrong, and the second, you have nothing to worry about. "Goodness, I am quite late," Mistress Sleep says to you in her charming voice. Charming, quite literally, as you feel her words are the catalyst of a spell. You are enchanted with her. "I don't understand," you say. You try to move, and you succeed. You lean up on your elbows and Mistress Sleep tilts her head at you. "Well, I am forgetful at times," Mistress Sleep laments, more to herself than to you. She doesn't seem at all bothered by this statement; she sounds more like she's explaining something very basic to a very small child. Two plus two equals four. I am forgetful at times. "That's okay," you say, trying to reassure her, though you know intrinsically that it isn't necessary. It's an automatic response, a human nicety. It's conditioning. You feel a little silly after the words leave your lips, but Mistress Sleep looks at you with deep appreciation. "Allow me to make it up to you," Mistress Sleep says. Her voice never changes, never grows in volume or takes on unexpected inflections. She's so predictable. You find so much security in her words. "How," you ask, without the energy for a question mark. Already, your elbows are starting to ache. Sitting up, even a little bit, in her presence is not something an ordinary human can do. But you and sleep never had a good relationship. You've never had a house call before, not like this. "I'll leave you with a blessing," Mistress Sleep says. "Something to always remember me, even on nights when I am late." "A blessing," you say, but this was never a question. Your head is a little fuzzy, and you had to repeat it to properly understand it. "Now let's see..." Mistress Sleep stands up and wanders around your room. Your adrenaline is turned off. Your thoughts are flighty and light. Your body is weak. Above everything else, you're so tired. Maybe that is why you don't think to stop Mistress Sleep from exploring your room, or maybe you want her to find it. "Ah," Mistress Sleep says, turning over one of your diapers in her hands. "This will do." "What... wait, um..." The moment comes back to you so quickly that it feels like whiplash. Like that moment where you lean back too far in a chair. Like that moment when you fall in a dream, and you wake up thinking you're falling in real life. You manage to sit up straight, but at the cost of everything else. You begin to feel nauseous. "Ah ah, what did I say?" Mistress Sleep says in her same voice, though you swear you detect something new. Something maternal. "No need to get up, darling." "But... it's not what it looks like..." The nausea creeps into you like a virus. It spreads through your stomach and into your brain. The next thing you know, Mistress Sleep is laying you back down on your pillow. The nausea subsides and heavy exhaustion takes its place. "There we go," Mistress Sleep coos, brushing your hair back once more with her fingertips. "Doesn't that feel better? There's no need to be embarrassed." But you are embarrassed. Though Mistress Sleep shows no signs of judgement in her voice or her actions, your cheeks are warm and pink. You look up at her as she unfolds your diaper and the crinkles echo through the quiet room. "I really dun need..." You try to argue, but you stumble over your consonants. The T in don't is hard to hit. Mistress Sleep either doesn't notice or she finds it too ordinary to acknowledge. "You must feel so insecure without your diapers," Mistress Sleep says airily, like the word diapers was no less common to her than the word darling. "It's no wonder you've been sleeping so poorly. But this will help, I assure you." Mistress Sleep peels back your blankets and grabs you by the ankles. With no friction at all, as if you were lying on air instead of a mattress, she turns you to face her. She puts your ankles together and lifts them into the air with one hand, and the other expertly pulls off your pajama bottoms and underwear with the other. The way she maneuvers you, like you weigh nothing at all, makes you feel so small and vulnerable. Yet, you know that you could stop her with just a word. You know that you could tell her no and she would listen. But you don't tell her no. You don't want her to stop. You feel safe with her, as surely as you feel safe in your diapers. Mistress Sleep lays the diaper under your bottom and lowers your ankles. Every touch of her skin on yours is like an invitation into another world. By the time she has powdered you and taped the diaper in place around your hips — with unbelievable symmetry — you're awash with dreamy faraway feelings. You look up at Mistress Sleep with heavy, glossy eyes and a dumb little smile. "Now doesn't that feel wonderful," Mistress Sleep says dreamily, as a statement and not as a question. Her voice sounds no different, and yet it washes over you like waves at the beach. Each word is liquid candy, sticking to the insides of your mind. You squeeze your thighs together and the diaper crinkles. "Now let's see, what else helps a little one like you drift off to dreamland?" Mistress Sleep says to herself as you lie helpless and happy in your own bed. Then she nods in recollection, like it had been a while since she had to put a baby to sleep. "Ah yes, a bottle. That should help." Inside Mistress Sleep's dreamscape, there is no true time or linearity. It looks like your bedroom; it very likely is your bedroom. But the way Mistress Sleep already has a baby bottle in her hands confounds you. Maybe you nodded off again. Then again, does it really concern you where an adult gets your bottle? All you need to worry about is drinking it. Mistress Sleep sits on your bed, with her back against the headboard, and pulls you into her lap. Once more, you're reminded how little you weigh to her. She nuzzles you into her chest, so that your cheek is against her breast. She could lower her top and slip her own nipple into your mouth, but her gown is so long and graceful and complicated, that your mind can't process what that would look like. Instead, the nipple of the baby bottle is pushed between your lips and you suck it without thinking. Warm milk — the temperature of the human body — splashes onto your tongue. It's thick and creamy, like a dessert, with a tantalizing sweetness. After only the first mouthful, you want to drink nothing else for your entire life. While you nurse the bottle, Mistress Sleep hums a lullaby you swear you have heard before, maybe when you were very little. You feel her hand on your diaper, gently patting the plastic. Everything she does reminds you of what you are to her: an incapable baby, in need of adult intervention. Time is not true or linear in this moment. You nurse that bottle for what feels like hours, and at the same time, only minutes. When the bottle is empty, she picks you up like you are nothing more than an actual child and sets you on her hip. She tucks your head into her shoulder and cradles you with an arm under your diapered butt. She bounces in place, slowly and rhythmically, as a bit of drool spills out of your mouth and onto her pretty gown of stars and moons. "You're safe now," she whispers to you, but her voice is no different. "You're safe in your diapers, and you are safe in my arms. They are one and the same to you." "Mmm..." This sound escapes your mouth, but it isn't one of protest. It is one of agreement. You are safe in your diapers, and you are safe in her arms. Your eyes are so heavy, and your thoughts are so small in such a vast sky. They are birds flying off into the horizon. The only things close by are Mistress Sleep's sticky words and the calming bob of her body, like a rocking cradle. "Whenever you can't sleep, my darling," she says, "all you have to do is put on one of your diapers. You'll feel my arms around you. You'll feel the world fall away. You'll be safe with me, no matter where you are." You hear her. You understand. For the rest of your life, as long as you are diapered, you can drift off to sleep with ease. You can take naps. You can sleep the whole night through. And if you have to go potty? Well, there's no reason you would even need to wake up. "Ahh, there we go..." Mistress Sleep slowly stops rocking you. Your eyes are closed, and you can only barely feel the tilt of your body as she tucks you into bed. You try to mutter something. Maybe you say thank you. Maybe you say you love her. You can't remember now, so close to sleep. But you remember one final thing, one final feeling: a kiss on your forehead. Then you sleep like a baby. [End.]