The Funeral

[Youngatheart252]

the only way I can describe this is "fucking brutal".

You have a gift for writing and getting the reader to care about the characters, please continue.

[diaperpt]

There is not much I could say. Take the time you need in the next sections but know you've got an audience waiting to see what happens to Gary now.

[WBDaddy]

There is not much I could say. Take the time you need in the next sections but know you've got an audience waiting to see what happens to Gary now.

As luck would have it, the re-posting here worked (broke me through the mental block and got me some direction), and I hit a nice groove this afternoon. Without further adieu...

[WBDaddy]

Chapter 13

The world was a spinning blur the first time Gary attempted to open his eyes. He saw what looked to be a 9-month-old boy slamming a plastic shovel into the dirt between his legs and babbling a few feet away. He closed them again as he struggled to reorient himself. He was vaguely aware of the sound of small children chattering around him. A little girl's shout pierced through the buzz "NANA! Gary's not moving!", and he heard a screen door open and the sound of heavy footprints headed his direction.

"WAKE UP, BABY BOY!" That voice brought him immediately into focus, but he scarcely had a chance to process it before he felt a violent jerk on his arm that brought him up to his feet and opened his eyes wide. "SO YOU PISSED YOUR PANTS ALREADY, DID YOU?!" Gary looked down at the sagging diaper between his legs and fear gripped him. His mother grabbed him around the waist with one arm and carried him like a football back towards the house. "Time to change the pissy baby!" she sneered. Tears began to fill his eyes again. Up the stairs and into the screened porch they went, and she dumped him roughly on his back on the wooden picnic table. The back of his head smacked against one of the planks, disorienting him for a moment with fresh pain. He scarcely had time to react before she ripped the tapes off his diaper and pulled out from under him. She tossed it into the waste bin, grabbed his legs, and twisted him over on his backside. He begged and pleaded through the tape. "PISSY! BABY! LIKES! WEARING! DIAPERS! DOESN'T! HE?!" she barked in rhythm with her hand crashing down on his backside. "MAYBE! GARY'S! TURNING! TWO! INSTEAD OF! NINE! TOMORROW!". She stopped and listened to his muted screeching with satisfaction as she turned him back over and taped a fresh diaper onto his backside. She shoved her face directly in his, a few inches separating them, and spat "Imagine what your FRIENDS will think when they see you PISSING YOUR PANTS like a little BABY tomorrow! I think that's a FINE idea, to send you to the party like THIS, so EVERYONE knows what a little BABY you are!"

She grabbed him roughly as he wailed and carried him into the house. She stood him in a corner directly in the front foyer, facing the wall. "If you even THINK about moving from this spot, I'll tan you black and blue!" she hissed. He snuffled and gasped through his nose for air, as his backside screamed.

A few minutes later, it dawned on him why she had put him there, as he heard a car pull up to the curb. He heard his mother call off the back porch "Ali! Derek! Come inside, your Mama's here!" Gary hid his face in the corner of the wall. He heard the shuffling of bags and jackets as the doorbell rang. His mother came to the door and threw it open, stepping to the opposite side of the foyer from Gary, to ensure that the young mother's attention was drawn to him standing there.

"Oh my, who is this little one? Awfully big for diapers, isn't he?" she said in a surprised tone.

"Oh that's my baby boy Gary. He's been throwing tantrums and wetting his pants today, so he's standing in the corner in his diapers, where all naughty little boys belong." Josie sneered.

The two children ran to the door and shouted "Mommy! Mommy!" in unison and each grabbed a leg. The young mother turned and said "Yes, children, calm down now. Hopefully neither of you were in the corner like Gary today."

"Oh no." Josie laughed. "These two were perfect angels today, weren't you." she smiled sweetly at the children. "Only Gary was being a naughty little baby today."

"Well, I do hope he behaves himself better soon, so he can get out of that corner." the woman said sympathetically.

"I wouldn't bet on it." his mother sneered. "I swear, the child ENJOYS being punished, as much as he misbehaves."

Karen picked up Gary's personal belongings at the front desk on her way off the ward. She grabbed his cellphone and flipped through, grumbling "Where the... Got it!" As the elevator closed, she called Jesse's number.

"Hey bro, what's up?" the gruff voice spoke up on the other end.

"Not bro, Jesse." she answered.

"Woah, Karen? What's going on? Where's Gary?"

Karen proceeded to tell him morosely of the events that had transpired and the doctor's expectations for the near future.

"Jesus Christ, Karen. What can I do to help?" Jesse's voice trembled.

"Get a hold of Frank, and the two of you be ready when I call. Gary's going to need all the help we can give him once they let him out of there."

"I can do that. Any visiting allowed?"

"Not yet, Jesse. Hopefully he'll be stable enough to release by the time he's stable enough to have visitors, or at least that's what the doc is expecting."

"Jesus, Karen. I knew how much the two of them fought, but what could possibly have happened that..."

"Jesse, trust me, dear, you don't know how deep this goes. Even what I saw firsthand was nowhere near the sum of it... We'll talk more later. I have some more calls to make right now. I'll keep you posted."

"Thank you, Karen. I'll give Frank a shout now."

Karen ended the call and began flipping back through the phone. She found an incoming text from what appeared to be a co-worker and dialed.

[square_duck]

This whole thing sounded very familiar, but I couldn't place it. This is very similar to that film that was discussed here, that Angela brought up, "Redemption". The characters are pretty much the same, except the 'subject' is male instead of female. and he is older. Abusive, psychotic, self absorbed mother and a dead father, and the child gets blamed for the death etc....

yeah, it's brutal, and I'm one of many who get the willies and crawling skin when reading it. Fortunately I have been able to move through it, but I get the images from "Redemption" flashing through my head instead of the boy. It's sad either way. It's really sad the amount of damage that this kind of thing does to people, and it is a life long thing as well, not like a cut or bruise that will heal and eventually "go away"

I don't know if I can finish reading it....I got as far as chapt 10 before I had to go to work....I might not be able to finish it....and be able to sleep

This is a very visceral story....well written, yes....but there are those of us out here who have had to deal with some aspect of this, and it rings a LOT of bells.

I'll be right over there......reading......maybe-------->

[ZoomElastic]

WBDaddy, thank you for writing this. It's far from the usual fare and has quickly become something I check more than daily for updates. (Not to pressure you, I just want to read each chapter as it comes out.)

The doctor's are really going above and beyond with their scheduling, so people know. Real life medicine rarely moves this fast but it makes the story much more engaging than "okay, you hour is up, come back in a week." And I can completely believe that in the tight knit community Gary is in that these people would work this hard for him.

You write very well. Please continue.

[WBDaddy]

WBDaddy, thank you for writing this. It's far from the usual fare and has quickly become something I check more than daily for updates. (Not to pressure you, I just want to read each chapter as it comes out.)

The doctor's are really going above and beyond with their scheduling, so people know. Real life medicine rarely moves this fast but it makes the story much more engaging than "okay, you hour is up, come back in a week." And I can completely believe that in the tight knit community Gary is in that these people would work this hard for him.

You write very well. Please continue.

In all honesty, I treated the "case" like a quasi-emergency (where docs would normally bend a bit on scheduling) because I didn't think anyone would want to sit around waiting through a week's worth of day-to-day with little happening.

[diaperpt]

The story is very compelling as written. I'm looking forward to more.

[babyjennie]

Once again, WB Daddy, you've written a hell of a story here. As others described it, compelling. Keep up the good work and keep posting.

Hugs from Baby Jennie in Australia

[LtBaby]

Godd story. Gary will have friends around and his Auntie around while he is healing.

[WBDaddy]

Chapter 14

One by one, parents came and picked up their children, and Gary stood there, facing the wall, beet red as his mother went well out of her way to shame him each time. His legs felt like rubber after an hour and a half, but as the last child left with her father, he finally dared to hope that the punishment was over.

As she closed the door, his mother turned around and cooed sarcastically "Aw, what's the matter, baby tired of standing in the corner?" Gary silently shook his head yes.

"Turn around, baby!" she spat. He complied, keeping his eyes on the floor.

"Aren't you just fucking pitiful?!" She ripped the tape off his face in one swift, vicious motion. Gary struggled to hide how much it hurt, but a tear leaked out of his left eye.

"What, did you want your binky back, baby?!" she hissed. He shook his head no. "You gonna cry now because Mommy took your binky away?!" He shook his head again.

"Did you PISS yourself again? Do you need another diaper change?!" Again he shook his head no, cringing a bit.

She put her hand on his crotch and squeezed. "Good. Go wash your filthy hands and then get your ass to the table!" As he turned around, she swatted him viciously on the backside, half landing on the diaper and half across his lower back. He stumbled a bit and walked faster.

As soon as he turned the water on in the sink, his bladder awoke with a vengeance. He squeezed his legs together as much as he could while he scrubbed his hands. He was petrified of what new retribution would come if he failed to hold it, but the cramping was overwhelming. He dried his hands off and made his decision. He reached down and tried to pull one of the tapes. It released, but not quietly. He pulled the front of the diaper down and began to pee into the toilet. A wave of relief washed over him, but it was short-lived as he heard his mother shriek as she stormed down the hallway "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING IN THERE?!"

Gary was in a full panic as he tried to finish his business. Just as his mother reached the door, he pulled the diaper back up and tried to re-tape it - too late. She threw the door open, and it caught him flush, sending him sprawling into the tub. "WHO TOLD YOU TO TAKE YOUR DIAPER OFF, YOU LITTLE SHIT?!"

He burst into fresh tears and wailed "I had to go pee! I'm sorry!"

"NOT AS SORRY AS YOU'RE ABOUT TO BE, MISTER!" she shrieked. She grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the tub. He struggled to get his feet under him as the diaper fell off and he slipped on it. She dragged him into her bedroom and reached into the closet for the belt.

He curled up into a defensive position on the floor and yelled "NO, MOMMY, I'M SORRY!" She turned around with fury in her eyes and started swinging. The first lash bit his thigh and he yelped as he grabbed his leg. The next came down across his arm. He screamed and writhed on the floor as she whipped him again and again, with absolutely no regard for location, lashing his back, his legs, arms, and once even across his cheek, which began to bleed almost immediately. This last strike gave her pause, if only momentarily. He was curled into a ball, arms now covering his face, when she dropped the belt and stepped over him, out of the bedroom. She returned to the doorway and screeched "GET THE FUCK UP!" He struggled to his feet and she grabbed him by the back of his shirt, dragged him into his bedroom, and threw him roughly onto the bed. "YOU'RE NOT GONNA BLEED ON MY BED, YOU LITTLE SHIT!" she growled as she pulled his ankles into the air and put another disposable under him, then roughly taped him back up. She grabbed his arm, pulled him back to his feet, and dragged him down the stairs and into the nursery. She heaved him up over a railing and down into one of the cribs, and latched down the safety strap across his middle. "You don't need any dinner, you fucking BRAT! And if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth SHUT for the rest of the night!" She flipped the light off and slammed the door behind her.

Gary lay there, paralyzed with fear, struggling to contain the weeping that had devolved into sniffles and hiccups by this point. The welts screamed at him from all over his body as he lay there, eyes shut tight, for what seemed like an eternity before sleep finally opened its arms to him.

After finally getting word to Human Resources at Gary's workplace in Manchester and passing contact info back and forth to Dr. Ulven's office, Karen drove home in a daze. The guilt weighed heavy on her chest as she recalled that black morning in 1985, her still-drunk sister opening the door with the stench of stale bourbon on her breath, Gary's battered body lying in that tiny crib, reflexively covering up when she touched him, the terror in his eyes... It was the only time she'd ever completely lost her temper with her sister, punching Josie square in the nose and leaving her intoxicated form on the floor as she carried the child out to her truck. She knew she should have done more. Why didn't she go to the police? Why didn't she call Child Protective Services? Why didn't she just refuse to bring Gary back? The normally stoic Karen Makowski was in tears by the time she pulled up in front of the old farmhouse, and found herself unable to do anything but weep into the steering wheel after she shut down the old Ford.

[diaperpt]

the pressure of telling, the pressure of not telling. but she didn't do the right thing. he needed so much help right then. what a story.

[Codymoogle]

This story is emotionally very hard to read. I almost throw up every time I read the flashbacks...That said, it's VERY good, and I can't stop reading. Gary deserves happiness...

~ moogle

[ihatemyself]

iv been lurking here for god knows how long and this story made me want to post. This is the best iv seen

[WBDaddy]

I apologize profusely for my neglect of this story. It took a long time to figure out where to go from that spot.

Chapter 17

Gary opened his eyes, and found himself staring straight up at the dim fluorescent light on the ceiling. His mind was in total chaos. The question of "where am I?" briefly surfaced, and was shouted down by a chorus of "WHO am I?" The fact that he couldn't move anything but his head didn't help. The fact that his whole body trembled uncontrollably, despite his inability to move, made it difficult to quell the panic rising inside of him.

"Hello?" he croaked, in a voice that didn't seem to belong to him. He was frightened by it. That couldn't have been him. He just turned 9. How could that voice be his? It was much older. As he continued to try and make sense of what was happening, another fact was reported to him by his olfactory glands - he had soiled himself. The stench brought shame, but more importantly it brought a new panic, and a new dread, that of his mother's wrath. He recalled the beating he received the last time he so much as peed in his pants, and shuddered to think of how she would react to this, as his eyes welled and his throat tightened.

All at once his thoughts were shattered by a door opening. He stretched his neck as far as he could to see a woman he vaguely recognized appear in the room. "Gary, you're awake!" she exclaimed.

"Don't tell mommy, please!" he struggled out as his vision clouded with salt water. He still didn't understand why his voice sounded so wrong, but the fear had so overwhelmed him it no longer mattered.

A look of grave concern struck the woman's face as she bent down and said "Tell mommy what, Gary?"

"Don't tell her I... I pooped in my pants" he whimpered as the tears began to flow freely.

The woman looked stunned for a moment, then recovered and said "Gary, believe me, Mommy will never hurt you again, I promise. I need you to believe me, Gary, and I need you to stay calm for me, so I can get someone to come and get you cleaned up, alright?" She started to stand up.

"NO!" he shouted, fully in the throes of panic now. "Don't go! Mommy will come! She'll hit me with the belt again! Don't let her hit me anymore! PLEASE!" He began to hyperventilate.

"GARY!" she shouted at him as she bent back down. "Gary, stay with me! I'm not going anywhere!" He felt her hand on his cheek, and he pulled away as the sting from the gash his mother's belt left came rushing back. "Gary! Gary?!" her voice began to trail away as his eyes closed tightly and he spiraled back into the dark recesses of the nightmare.

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Karen sat down on the old sofa, reliving her own guilt-ridden nightmare, carrying that broken, trembling body up the stairs, changing his sodden diaper as gently as she could as his vacant eyes stared out through the window, and lying there on the bed, holding him to her bosom until he finally fell back to sleep. She recalled all the phone conversations with the parents of the expectant partygoers, delivering the naked lie that Gary was terribly sick, and there would be no birthday party for him that weekend. The memories all rushed back to her at once, the boy's almost hourly screaming in between fits of sleep, the phone call from his hung-over mother, begging remorsefully to speak to her son, Karen's own fury brought down verbally on her sister's ear.

Each flash weighed heavier on the old woman's mind. It was a different time, and she was raised to keep family matters in the family, she kept telling herself. The nagging truth kept returning - the only thing she could take solace in was the simple reality that Josie likely would have killed the boy had she not picked him up, but even that was an empty truth - she would have come whether he had been beaten or not, because the arrangements for the party had already been made.

Now, the hens have come home to roost, she thought. Now she was faced with the boy being broken once more, only this time she was completely helpless to do anything about it. An appropriate penance for her failure to act when opportunity presented itself. But why did he have to suffer so much, just to present her with her just punishment? Has he not already endured enough? How much pain can one soul bear, before it collapses under the load?

The questions assaulted her tower of resolve which, for the first time since her own mother died, began to show signs of stress. Guilt is a powerful adversary, when one has no shield from it, when one has no choice but to accept their share of the blame.

The phone ringing was a welcome respite from this plague of memory. It was Dr. Ulven, called to update her on Gary's condition, that he had regained consciousness for a short time, but was confused and delirious, believing his mother was still alive, and ready to beat him for some perceived infraction, until they were forced to sedate him once again as his heart rate and blood pressure were spiraling out of control.

The good doctor may not have realized what was happening, but Karen certainly did. She rushed out the door, got back into her old Ford, and headed once again back toward the city. She would not fail him this time...

[WBDaddy]

Chapter 18 - A brief interlude

Josephine Alameda Makowski wasn't born a ball of hate, but it certainly didn't take long for that part of her personality to flourish. She barely knew her father, and most of that recollection was of her mother scraping him off the floor and dumping him into bed in the mornings after his nights of carousing. His inexplicable disappearance from her life was so closely followed by Mama getting "sick", that in her young mind, the two events were irrevocably connected, that Papa had made her sick before he left, thus planting the seed of her man-hate.

As she grew up, there developed two very, very distinct faces of Josie. First, there was the fire-spitting, brawling tomboy who struck fear into the hearts of the would-be bullies who made the mistake of tangling with her. This was the incarnation of her ever-increasing rage as she watched her mother deteriorate each night, and it was regularly unleashed on any unwitting schoolchild who dared to make commentary on her home situation. No, she didn't win every fight she started, but no one was ever left unblemished by Josie after such an encounter. The fires of her hate were only stoked by the continual discipline handed down by the schools and by her sister, whom she resented even more for Karen's steadfast guarding of their mother, consistently refusing Josie the affection she so desperately craved with declarations that "Mama is sleeping, you'll not wake her" and "Mama is too tired now".

The few moments she managed to steal when Karen was off tending the horses or taking care of other necessary tasks around the place were where the other side of Josie showed itself, the tiny child who needed nothing more than a soft embrace and a kind word, and the assurance that she was safe and loved. This was the side of Josie that, after her mother's death, led her into the disastrous relationships throughout middle and high school, desperate for affection and accepting it wherever she could get it, at virtually any price.

The two halves really fed on each other - the boys who used her and left her callously became more fuel for her rage against men, and the demonstration of that rage in turn made her starve even more for that attention. Her sister did her best to try and deal with this Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome, but the performances Josie put on at home, flying into rage at a moment's notice, only to collapse into a sobbing puddle a few minutes later, merely reinforced Karen's view of Josie as a petulant child, and it was very difficult not to treat her as such, even as she approached adulthood.

It was, in Karen's mind, an absolute miracle when Mark Simmons came into Josie's life. The boy was 19 when Josie met him, and he seemed to immediately placate the savage. Of course, Karen distrusted him immediately: What possible use for a sophomore in high school could this college boy have other than a sex toy? But there was something decidedly different about him, a fatherly gentleness that quelled her rage and brought the innocent child out. Josie, for her part, attached herself to him completely, and the romance continued throughout her completion of high school. As Josie was entering her first semester of college at UND, Mark was graduating, and he took a job locally as an accountant in order to stay near her. Against Karen's stern advice, Josie moved in with Mark rather than stay on the farm, which raised many an eyebrow in this highly conservative community. The hippie movement of a few years before notwithstanding, "free love" hadn't quite caught on in the stoic, Lutheran upper midwest circa 1976.

Then, for Josie anyway, the unthinkable happened. She turned up pregnant. Mark was overjoyed, and insisted on an immediate marriage. Josie was crushed. Her own dreams of being a career woman shattered against the rock of this new reality growing inside her, and she resented it. Slowly, but surely, the other Josie began to surface once again, the wild animal pushing the innocent child back into her subconscious as she dropped out of school on Mark's insistence. He managed to keep the beast at bay with his constant doting over his pregnant wife, but once Gary was born, Mark was completely enraptured with the child, and Josie found herself competing with the boy for "Daddy's" attention. Suddenly, both faces of Josie hated the infant. It was at this point Josie turned to liquor to calm the monster growing inside her. She grudgingly attended to the boy's physical needs, feeding and changing him during the day, but Mark was the only source of affection for Gary, as Josie's jealousy was all-consuming, and she began to lash out at the boy for any and all perceived faults. Sadly, this coupled with the lack of mothering turned the boy into an anxious wreck, which further retarded his development.

Then came the fateful phone call, that early Saturday morning in the cool of the spring of 1980. Her Daddy was gone, shot by an overzealous weekender from St. Paul, mistaken for a deer in the morning fog. The two sides of Josie split completely. Desperate for work, with no degree, no money for daycare for the child, and Gary's potty training still a disaster area thanks to this new trauma, she turned to babysitting out of her home. It was bizarre to watch the two halves of her unstable personality interact. The childlike innocent would surface when caring for her charges, like a little girl excited to have friends over to play. Her own son, however, was a constant reminder of all that had been taken from her, and the beast was the side of Josie he most often experienced.

On the weekends, without the distraction of the other children, sometimes guilt would get the better of her, and there would be long, tearful sessions of apologies and promises to her son, assurances that Mommy loved him and would try harder not to be so angry. During the summers, when Karen kept him at the farm, she called nightly, often drunk. Karen usually intercepted her when she was too sloppy to be coherent, but the conversations with Gary were always huge puddles of how much she missed him and was looking forward to the school year starting so he would come home.

She managed her drinking quite effectively during these years, confining her binges to after the last parent had picked up their little one. As Gary began to get older, however, she forced him into serving as a watchman while she took nips out of sight during the day. By the time Gary graduated college, she had decompensated to the point where the business was crumbling out from underneath her. It was Karen alone who experienced the constant drunken phone calls by this point, which increased in frequency as Josie's last few clients went off to school and she was unable to recruit new ones. It was pretty well miraculous that she survived as long as she did, as she systematically burned through the savings she meticulously had built over the years from the SS survivor's benefits for Gary, then took a liar's loan second mortgage on her house during the big credit explosion, all to finance her now-constant drinking and keep her utilities paid. Josie died a brutal death of liver and kidney failure, a combination of the booze and all the aspirin she took to stave off the hangovers. The last years of her life the alcohol became the only thing that kept her moving, as the stomach ulcers and the constant abdominal pain tormented her, all the while refusing to seek medical help until it was far too late.

The stone Karen had erected at her gravesite read simply "Daddy's girl" - and no one but Karen ever fully understood what that meant.

[WBDaddy]

Chapter 19

Gary opened his eyes and found himself lying on his back, staring at a dark ceiling. He moved his legs and arms - they were tiny, but unrestrained, and he found himself once again tucked into a very thick diaper, with naught but a blue t-shirt for clothes. He quickly realized that familiar pacifier was once again settled on his lips. He sat up and saw once again the long hallway, with the illuminated figure at the end. He struggled to his feet, apprehensively. His instincts screamed for him to run to what he knew was his father waiting for him, but there was another feeling inside him that slowed his steps.

He waddled, with some difficulty, down the hall, towards the light. It took what seemed a lifetime to close the distance to his daddy's waiting arms, and as he drew closer, the fear welled up inside him stronger, and instead of increasing his pace, he slowed even further. Daddy's face looked exactly as it did before, smiling, with waiting arms, but something was wrong, he could feel it, and the cold fingers of the rising panic gripped his very core...

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Sharon Ulven sat in her office, frustrated, as she dictated into the hand-held recorder: "...next paragraph, discussion, colon. This patient is the first true exception I have experienced to the steadfast rule of regression therapy, that a time exists in the patient's life where the anxiety that disrupts their current functioning does not exist. Literally, the patient has no recollection, subconscious or otherwise, where the interaction with his primary caregiver did not include a level of anxiety and/or outright fear. Obviously, his psychotic break came from reliving the most extreme duress he experienced at the hands of his mother, but without a start point free from tension between the patient and his mother, the regression technique fails on its face. At this point, I am at a loss for how to proceed, particularly since the psychotic features are demonstrating an internal regression directly into the path of the most severe anxiety in the patient's history. Medication would absolutely be insufficient to control his duress without leaving him too sedate to engage in the talk therapy necessary to lead him back into a recognition of reality.

Next paragraph, assessment, colon. Number one, severe mental decompensation, status post regression therapy. Number two, nocturnal enuresis, sudden onset. Number three, anxiety not otherwise specified.

Next paragraph, plan, colon. Continue to monitor in containment room. Remove restraints, in consideration of possible contributing factor to disorientation-panic, which further exacerbates symptoms. Thorazine 50 mL IM p.r.n. severe agitation. Consultation with Dr. Fitzhugh in St. Paul in the a.m. Dr. Sharon Ulven, ending dictation. Please cc a copy of this dictation to Dr. Mark Hjelmstad at the Aurora Clinic."

She stopped the recording and held her head in her hands on the desk. "How the hell does it go that wrong for that long, and the guy manages to keep his shit together for nearly two decades beyond?" she wondered aloud. She sighed deeply, stood up, and headed to the nurse's station. Her cellphone rang, disrupting her train of thought momentarily as she answered "Dr. Ulven?"...

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Karen Makowski pushed the old Ford hard down US-81, thoughts swirling through her head. It all made sense to her, what Sharon had told her about Gary's current mental state and what had led him there. For all her failures, Karen had always been Gary's saving grace when he most needed it. When his mother was at her out-of-control worst, she had been his refuge, even when it was only to pick up the pieces and put him back together again. If Gary was in that place again, she knew it was her alone that would be able to lead him back out. As she pulled into the parking garage at UND, she called Sharon's personal line and told her to clear the way...

[diaperpt]

I had been following this story for several chapters, but I've missed a lot of it lately. This is such an intriguing story! There are so many good points to mention, I won't even try.

The drama is compelling and I want to read more! Take the time you need as you continue to write, because it seems to me the story has been carefully crafted.

[ZoomElastic]

I'm worried about our hero and how the psych doctor is going to get him back.

Please tell us what happens next?

[WBDaddy]

I almost pulled the plug on coming here because of DD's behavior in the BMX thread, but I think I'll just stay the hell out of the other forums instead of depriving those of you who have been following this and Better Late Than Never finished stories.

Chapter 20

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The scream rang shrill in Gary's ears, a child's scream, a girl. Before he could find the source of the scream, he felt a hard shove from his right, and he tumbled over on the ground, stunned. "MY DADDY!" came the shriek. Gary looked up at a very young looking girl, though bigger than he was, staring down at him. She was maybe as tall as Daddy's hip, and she stared down at him with fury as he backed up, frightened.

Gary choked up and stammered "But... that's my Daddy," in a near squeak.

She stomped toward him "NO! MY DADDY! YOU STOLE HIM FROM ME!" she shouted as he cowered beneath her.

Terror and confusion now fully gripped Gary, and he began to sob as he wet himself in fear. "You can't... he's not... NO!" he blubbered, barely able to form thoughts as he continued to crab-walk backward down the hall.

"That's right, piss yourself, you little BABY!" she sneered at him, marching forward.

The familiar words clicked in Gary's mind, and the connection was made. He knew this face. He had scene it on Aunt Karen's mantle.

Gary stopped crawling and struggled to his feet. "Mommy..." he started.

She shoved him back down and said "NO! STAY AWAY FROM MY DADDY!"

Undaunted, he stood back up. "Mommy... Please..." he struggled through the tears.

She pushed him again, but he managed to keep his feet. "You CAN'T!" she said, her words starting to falter. "He was MINE!"

Gary started to walk toward her, tears streaming down his face, and now it was her backing up. "Mommy... I wanted you too... Why couldn't you love me?" he wept.

"No..." she stammered. "You took him away... you took it all away... I was supposed to be the princess... but you..." Tears began to form in her eyes as well, as she staggered backward.

"No, Mommy... All I wanted was for you to love me... Why couldn't you love me?"

She stumbled backward and fell on the floor. "NO!" she shrieked through her own weeping. "NO! NO! NO!" She kicked her legs and pounded her fists as she screamed.

Gary was stunned at this display. He looked up at his father's form, still motionless, still smiling, but his eyes were vacant, as if oblivious to the exchange, and the hopelessness of it all hit him at once. He dropped to the floor, still watching his mother's young form pitching a fit, and managed "And now it's all gone, and we're all alone..."

The scene began to melt away all at once, and Gary found himself once again lying in the tall grass. The sky above was still dark, but the rain had stopped, and the wind was calm and gentle. He felt numb, and cold, but the panic that had gripped him so tightly was gone, blown away on the breeze.

He heard a voice from the distance "Gary? Come back, Gary..."

[diaperpt]

Wow! Intense. Great story and thanks for returning to it. I sense that some resolution may be coming, but that's for us to find out.

Will have to check BMX thread...sorry to hear you were ready to leave. I hope it all eventually works out.

[ZoomElastic]

Wow, it sounds like Gary has some strength and insight all on his own! I was expecting the big solution to come from the doctor. It's really nice to be reminded that victims can be strong and do a lot of their healing on their own. It's totally true but not a story that gets told much.

Thank you for your writing. I'm sorry that someone is being a jerk on that other board.

[LtBaby]

Good story. I'm sad see you go.