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Better Late Than Never


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Chapter 4

 

 

“Hmm…” Dakota allowed herself to smile. “…maybe we should all be friends, then.”

 

I'm really rooting for Kelsey

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Yet again, you've managed to write a story set within a world I wish would exist! Why can't I be a Forby?! :P

 

I mean, I think we'd all be terrible protagonists in the stories that I right.  

Ex: Suddenly Bill was in diapers and everyone thought of him as nothing more than a baby.  "Huh," Bill said leaning back in his newly manifested playpen. "well alright then." THE END

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I mean, I think we'd all be terrible protagonists in the stories that I right.  

Ex: Suddenly Bill was in diapers and everyone thought of him as nothing more than a baby.  "Huh," Bill said leaning back in his newly manifested playpen. "well alright then." THE END

Or the ever-so-dramatic cliffhanger: "Bill pooped his diaper effortlessly and went back to playing with his stacking rings. The question remained, when would Mommy change him?" DUN DUN DUN!!!

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I mean, I think we'd all be terrible protagonists in the stories that I right.  

Ex: Suddenly Bill was in diapers and everyone thought of him as nothing more than a baby.  "Huh," Bill said leaning back in his newly manifested playpen. "well alright then." THE END

In my case it would probably turn into a Quentin Tarantino film on acid.

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Awesome, we finally get to see them all come together. Wasn’t anything near to what I was expecting but can still come. I was expecting them to team up and try and overcome this magic being used on them. Instead it would seem they would rather wreck faces. Very pleased I had a like to give it. I can’t wait for more. 

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  • 2 months later...

 

There’s limitations to magic, however, dear friends.  That limit? Ourselves. This isn’t meant in a motivational sense such as “the only thing we need to fear is fear itself”.  Magic itself is fundamentally unlimited power, but because humanity has reached a stage in its preternatural awareness so that magic can be harnessed, the substance itself has become flawed.

 

Take the Greek Gods of ancient myth, for example.  Humanity’s collective belief in them made them come into existence (some might say).  Where did they live and look down on the Greeks? The top of a mountain, of course. Why not just in the sky?  Why not in an ethereal alternate dimension where they could simultaneously peek down on us mere mortals but have it to where we could not access them by climbing up a big rock?

Because collectively the Greeks couldn’t imagine such things.  They could imagine bearded men hurling lightning bolts from the clouds, but not alternate planes of existence.  They knew that lightning came from the sky, and their belief was strong enough to make real a Zeus to hurl them from on high, but because it was a man hurling those bolts, he’d have to live somewhere high as well, like a mountain.

 

Man is unable to fully imagine unlimited power.  Clever apes that we are, we are still bound by our own limitations, imaginations, knowledges, and lack thereof.  Man was not meant to fly, so we craft ourselves glorious waxen wings on which to fly upon. Yet the sun melts wax, and it is with that realization in mind that we plummet down to the waves below, having flown too close to the sun.  Our existence is one of limitations. We as a species define ourselves based on what we can’t do, rather than what we can. Even with magic to broaden the limitations, the limitations can never be fully removed.

Even someone with the purity of belief and willpower of a child knows of limitations, and in overcoming them with magic to bend the rules, the existence of other rules become set in stone.

 

-          An excerpt from “Do You Believe in Magic?” by Cornelius Crowley.

 

 

(Dakota)

 

Arms crossed over her chest, leaning against the rusty ladder of the rickety slide, Dakota stared at her two new (for now) friends.  The movie had finished, time out sentences had been served, diapers had been checked and changed where needed, and truces had been called. Pinocchio ended without incident, from the handful of sane women at least; more than few forever babies started bawling when it looked like the little wooden boy had died at the end. It was currently outdoor playtime. Now it was a time for proper introductions and to figure out exactly how they had gone from being young adults on the cusp of bigger and better things to perpetual toddlers, destined only for the cradle.  But where to do it where they wouldn’t be bothered?

 

Like a flock of ducklings, they’d waddled from place to place on the playground, seemingly as easily distracted as any of the other forever babies wandering from swings, to teeter totters, to jungle gym. The swings were all strap-in restraints with particularly bothersome adults who busied themselves pushing the Forbies happily entrapped in them.  A spot for two people in a three person group wouldn’t do, so the teeter totters wouldn’t work. The jungle gym was far too populated, and it went without saying that they didn’t want to be overheard by a “grown-up” or another “forever baby”.

 

The sandbox was out of the question, they all agreed.  Even if it would be an area where they could speak without too much meddling, the thought of sand (and OTHER things) getting into their clothes was a major turn off.  The spider-web dome only provided the illusion of privacy, and no amount of hunkering down would scatter the other big toddlers from climbing above them. (And the thought of a diaper leaking overhead gave them all chills…it did for Dakota at least.)  

 

A rusty and unoccupied slide is where they finally settled upon for their secret cabal.  Unoccupied, relatively unsupervised, (barring some slaggy middle-aged daycare worker waving to them every once in a while…easily appeased by a wave back), and fairly secluded off to the periphery of the playground, it was as close to adequate as the three of them could hope for.

 

Before they could begin talking, Dakota held up her index finger and cast her eyes on a certain little snitch with braided black hair making a beeline for them.  Alice had already started to toddle up, the bulge in her leggings looking like a pelvic tumor. That cunt was a troublemaker.

 

The blonde bitch (and proud of it) promised herself that if there was paint in this place, that Alice’s hair would be coated with it by the end of the day. Time to nip this complication in the bud.  A serpentine smirk and a lioness’s stare from Dakota sent the little brat back the way she came. No matter the age, or social status, Dakota’s “bitch, please” face had a kind of universal effect when needed.

 

Susie (or Suzanne, or whatever her name was) looked back over her shoulder where even now Alice was slinking away to the giant spring rockers, then back to Dakota, and cocked an eyebrow.  “Was that really necessary?” she asked. If it hadn’t been for the stuffed bunny that she was clutching to her chest, Dakota might’ve been able to take the other girl seriously…maybe.

 

“Probaby,” Dakota said, with a shrug.  “Dat chick’s a professnul shit shtirrer.  Trusht me.”

 

“Says the shit stirrer,” the third member of their little group chirped in.  The little bird with the curly hair had gotten awfully mouthy, even after hiding behind her own hands as a stranger wiped her ass for her.  Truth be told, Dakota probably wouldn’t have handled the situation any better. She’d yet to have anyone who wasn’t a blood relative do THAT to her- a lesser evil placebo to be sure, but one that made her feel less violated and more in control than she was.  Odds were a hundred to one that she’d make it through the day without some rando dragging a cold wet rag across her cooter, and she really ought not to judge before she’d walked a mile in someone else’s shoes, the tiny part of her conscience told her.

 

Still…

 

Time to establish a pecking order, Dakota thought. “Shays the one who shit her pantsh and towd ush ‘bout it.”  At least all of Dakota’s bathroom degradations over the past twenty-four hours had been subtle and (relatively) private.

 

“I’d respect your opinion of me a lot more if you weren’t sucking on that binkie right now,” Curly Top said.  Dakota looked down past her nose. Only then did she notice that the rubber bulb had made it back between her lips.  When had that gotten there?!

With an audible, almost comical “ptooey”, Dakota spit out the pacifier.  It didn’t get far, constrained as it was by the clip attaching it to her mint green onesie, but it was far enough for her purposes.  Dakota decided it was anger more than embarrassment that caused her skin to turn slightly pink, giving her a bizarre pastel Christmas look: pink blushing skin on green baby outfit.  “Fair enough,” she said, almost growling to the little bird. Deep breath. Deep breath. “Fair enough…uhh..name?”.

 

“Kelsey,” the girl answered. “My name’s Kelsey.”

 

“Dakota,” she introduced herself, properly.  Neither one extended their hand.

“Susan,” the girl with the bunny said.  (Close! So close. She looked more like a Susie anyways, so it still counted.)

 

They stared at each other in silence, for a moment.  How did one start a conversation like this, anyways? It’s not like there was a precedent for this sort of thing.

 

“So,” Dakota started. “You guys remember a time when you weren’t freaks?”

Kelsey turned her back to Dakota and wrapped her arms around herself.  

 

“Yeah…kinda…”

 

“We’re not freaks,” Susie said.  “We’re just-“

 

“Don’t you dare say ‘forever babies’” Dakota cut her off, “or any of that other schlock that every other dumbass here is spouting.”

 

“I was going to say, ‘in a messed up situation’,” Susie finished.  “I don’t think any of us would’ve been on a giant playground willingly a few days ago.”

Twitching her mouth to the side, Dakota said, “Yeah, this isn’t exactly my scene.”

“Mine either,” Susie said.  The two women looked to Kelsey.  The girl in the plastic pants turned around and fleetingly made eye contact.

 

“…yeah.”

 

The former queen bee saw the look in the little bird’s eyes, or more importantly saw how they twitched downward towards the ground.  She’d seen that reaction before back in the halcyon days of high school, usually when gossiping about the latest loser to get knocked up and how they would have to either get an abortion or drop out.

Target acquired.  Testing for vulnerability.  Dakota narrowed her eyes at Kelsey.  “Oh yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Kelsey repeated.  “Only weirdos are into this kid stuff. I wouldn’t be caught dead here if my parents hadn’t dragged me here.” The curly headed girl said all of this over her shoulder, as if Dakota’s very stare caused her discomfort.

Dakota had never been much for reading, but back in high school, she’d been forced to sit through a torturously boring read through of Hamlet.  Awful stuff. So boring. Ghost daddy comes back and says he was murdered, Hamlet spends way too much time trying to figure out what to do, and then dies.

 

Had Dakota written it, the play would have been a lot shorter and to the point:  Ghost Daddy. Murder. Revenge murder. The End. There wouldn’t be half a dozen acts of padding. (Shit! Don’t even THINK padding!)  But one part had stuck with her even after high school: ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’ People tended to make a bigger deal out of stuff they were guilty of.

 

(Ready, aim) “Really?” Dakota said, voice full of mock surprise.  (Fire.) “Because you looked pretty comfortable up front watching the movie and filling your panties in front of every-“

 

“SKANK!”

 

That escalated quickly.  A sore spot had been hit.  She’d ben right. Girl was a freak (before the rest of them had been, anyway).

 

Reacting on pure instinct Dakota put her hands up to block incoming cat claws, the smaller woman going for her eyes.  In a blur, Susie was between them, shoving the smaller girl back and getting her hair bow mussed in the process.

 

“HUGS!” Susie screamed at the top of her lungs.  “HUGS!” A profound list of expletives was about to erupt from Dakota’s mouth followed by some very physical retaliation, when she saw that one of the grown-ups was looking at them.  “HUGS!”

With no alternative left to her, Dakota followed suit, engaging in what had to be the most intense and awkward cuddle yet known to her.   Granted, it wasn’t the first time she pretended to like someone she couldn’t stand while authority figures were watching, but a group hug was a new personal low. “HUGS!”

 

Kelsey was still twitching, still struggling.  “We’re being watched,” Dakota whispered, “chill the fuck out.”

 

“Say you’re sorry,” Kelsey growled back, her voice surprisingly full of menace.  “Say you’re sorry or I rip your effin’ hair out.

 

“Do it,” Susie hissed. “Say you’re sorry.”

 

Eyes shut, and fingers crossed (mentally at least) Dakota huffed out, “Fine. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it’d hurt your feelings.” (Well, not that much, anyway.)  The tension in the three-way grapple left as Kelsey eased up, her muscles relaxing, no longer going for the throat.

 

“Break on three,” Susie instructed.  “One.”

 

“Two,” Kelsey said.

 

“Three!” they all said in unison.

 

They all broke apart, and still huffing and puffing from the adrenaline, put on big toothy grins.  The daycare worker who’d made her way towards the group stopped her approach and went back to her position watching forbies from a bench against the daycare wall.

Smoothing her polka dot dress, Susie turned to Kelsey. “This fighting stops now.”

 

“She started it!“ Kelsey whined like the child she was dressed as.

 

“And I’m stopping it,” Susie said flatly. “As far as we know, we’re the only three who remembers how the world is really supposed to be.  It’s some kind of miracle that we found each other. We can’t go pushing our luck and fighting all the time.”

 

Dakota couldn’t help but smirk. It was good to be her.  Sometimes even when she lost, she won.

 

The prissy little geek whirled around and leveled her finger inches away from Dakota’s nose. “And you’re going to stop provoking her,” she said.

 

“Who made you in charge?” Dakota scoffed.

 

Rather than answer directly, Susie did a kind of verbal parry.  “You keep it up, and we’ll leave you. You can be super judgmental and bratty by yourself.”

 

“You’d leave me?” Dakota asked, aghast.  “For her?”

 

“Uh-huh,” Susie- no, Susan…her name was Susan- said matter-of-factly.  She pointed a thumb back over to Kelsey. “I like her better than you.”

 

Absolutely dumb struck, Dakota just stood there. Before yesterday she’d always been the popular girl.  No one said ‘no’ to her. She ditched others. Nobody ditched her. The notion was inconceivable. The other girl might as well have told her that they had all grown gills and were breathing water at this very instant.

 

 “Basic supply and demand,” Susan went on.  “People who don’t think we should be in diapers are rare.  Unless you want to go play with the babies or be by yourself, you play by my rules. Got it?“

 

Rules?  Dakota could use rules.  Social expectations were her forte.  Time for a verbal parry of her own. “What rules?”  The other two girls looked at each other; dumbfounded.  They hadn’t thought of that. “How can I follow your rules if I don’t know them?”

Susan- nah, she was definitely a Susie- hemmed and hawed for a moment before Kelsey spoke up.  “No more picking on me,” she said.

 

“No more fighting with each other,” Susie added.  “We don’t have to like each other, but we can at least be civil.”

 

“Fair enough,” Dakota agreed.  “But we call each other out when we’re acting like ba-” Dakota stopped herself and course corrected mid-sentence.  “children…when we’re acting like children. We want to be treated like adults, right?”

 

Kelsey’s nose wrinkled with a scowl.  It was cute, honestly. “You were the one sucking on a binkie a second ago.”

 

Dakota shrugged. “And you called me on it, so I stopped it.” Then she waited a beat for effect and added, “Thanks.”

 

Susie asked, “You do realize you’re twiddling with it right now, right?”

 

She had not realized that.  Dakota looked down and saw her hands turning the paci over and over in them, inching closer and closer to her lips.  With considerable willpower and more than a hint of embarrassment, she put her hands behind her back, letting the rubber teat dangle on its cord.  “Thanks…” she said sincerely this time.

 

“Why don’t you just rip that thing off?” Kelsey asked, pointing to the pacifier.

 

“Why don’t you rip those plastic pants off?” Dakota countered.  “Dressing myself hasn’t exactly been in my skill set lately. My hands go numb, or my mind goes blank or something. There’s a block.”

 

Susie seemed agreeable to the idea.  “I think we ARE being affected by whatever magic is doing this. It’s just slower than everybody else for some reason.”

 

Even though her underwear yesterday had turned plastic-backed right in front of her as she pissed herself, Dakota couldn’t help but feel silly talking in terms of the mystical.

 

“Magic?”

 

“Do you have a better word for it?” Kelsey chirped in.

Dakota was about to levy a quip, but she stopped herself.  Nothing to gain from being a smart ass this time. “I guess not,” she admitted.  “What other rules?”

 

“No dirty diapers,” Kelsey brought up.

 

Instead of laughing at the idea, given the source of it, Dakota let her confusion show.  

 

“Come again?”

 

“No dirty diapers.”

 

“I don’t know about you,” Susie spoke up (bullshit, she totally knew), but I haven’t had the best track record of that lately.  Just thinking about it caused her two rose colored circles to bloom on her cheeks right underneath her glasses.

 

Kelsey blinked and licked her lips, as if choosing her words very carefully.  “I mean, no talking about stuff without clean diapers on. If it happens, it happens, but then we go get changed.  It’ll be like a bathroom trip.”

 

Susie saved Dakota the trouble of asking. “Why?”

 

“Babies might spend their time playing in wet and poopy diapers, but we shouldn’t.”

Remembering how much time she’d spent in her own sopping wet pampers at Brendan’s birthday party, with nary a cry of discomfort, Dakota blanched.  She really had been perfectly comfortable walking around and ‘playing’ in a wet diaper. Basting in her own shit had merely been inconvenient when just a day or so ago, the idea would be near vomit inducing.  “Something the matter?” Kelsey asked, a hint of smugness in her voice. She’d just hit one of Dakota’s sore spots and she knew it, too. (Damn it. Even playing field.) The queen bee had protested too much.

 

Shaking her head, Dakota just said “No. You’re right. Good point. Bathroom breaks. Deal.”

 

“No shame,” Susie said.  “We’ve gotta help each other, not tear each other down.” A warning look was fired at both Dakota and Kelsey. “We’ve gotta figure out what’s wrong with us, what’s causing it, and maybe we can figure out where to go from there.”

 

“And keep each other from going crazy,” Dakota added.  “Between high chairs and car seats and cribs, I’m already starting to feel claustrophobic.”  Sympathetic and knowing nods greeted Dakota’s eyes.

 

“Strollers too,” Susie added.

Kelsey threw her two cents in. “And changing tables.  We’re basically not trusted to have any freedom of movement.”

 

“It’s like those porn videos with the leather and rope, except there’s not any of the fun stuff.” Dakota said.  Her two companions looked at each other; seemed to consider a moment, then shrugged and nodded. “What’s worse though,” the queen bee vented on, “is how stupid everybody is.”

 

A thoughtful, yet worried look flashed across Kelsey’s face.  Little bird was thinking something. “Stupid how?”

 

“Maybe not stupid,” Dakota said, taking a moment to sort her thoughts out. She looked back and saw Alice, remembering their bathroom chat yesterday. “More like…I dunno…brainwashed?  It’s like they operate on some backwards baby logic or something.”

 

Susie clutched her stuffed bunny even tighter.  If the dumb thing had actual lungs, they’d be collapsed right now.  “Had a talk with my Mommy yesterday about that. Something doesn’t add up.  It’s like everyone wants to be babies.” Briefly, Dakota wondered if this new girl in the cutesy toddler dress normally referred to her mom as Mommy, or not.

 

“Ohmygodyes,” Kelsey echoed the sentiment with some excitement.  “It’s Peter Pan syndrome taken up to eleven.”

 

 “Real talk,” Dakota admitted, “I’m happy we’re doing this. Just sitting around and bitching,” she gestured to Kelsey, “even insulting someone and getting into an actual physical fight and cussed at instead of tears and running to tattle…it’s kinda a relief. If all I had was this romper room stuff to deal with, I think I’d go batshi-…” Dakota stopped mid-sentence.

 

The surge through gut hit her like a jackhammer.  The cramp came without warning or preamble, and within a second Dakota was moaning under her breath.  Soft moaning mutated into louder grunts as she bent her knees a bit, halfway registering what she was about to do and halfway acting on a kind of instinct. She either lacked control, or part of her didn’t want any.

 

When the first push came, her lips puckered and her teeth grit.  When the second one came and she felt her cheeks spreading, she fumbled for her pacifier.  On the third one her lips had started working the pacifier rapidly and noisily, and it was like a circuit had been completed.

 

Suck. Mewl. Grunt. Push. Suck. Mewl. Grunt. Push.  All the while, the back of Dakota’s diaper became fuller and fuller, while the rest of the world went away.  Just keep pushing. Let it all out. Let it go. The diaper didn’t sag as much, the onesie holding it up against her as she continued to poop, feeling the mess spread around with every grunt, her disgust increasing, but drowned out by the massive amount of relief she was experiencing at the same time.

 

In the back of her mind, a little voice that sounded deceptively like her own told her: ‘C’mon. It’s just poopie.  Finish poopin’, and you can go back to talkin’ with your friends. Heck, keep talkin’ with them while you poop. You can do both.  They won’t mind.’

 

They wouldn’t mind, would they? They’d done it themselves.  It was no big deal. To help herself, she spread her legs a bit more and squatted down, a dopey grin spreading across her face.  It just felt so much more natural to her all of a sudden; like this was how she was meant to do it. It was coming out! She could do it! She could do it! No need to hold back! No need for shame!  Just! A little! Mooooooore!

 

A long low moan, not unlike when she orgasmed (or when she was faking it) rattled around in her throat as the last of the soil filled the back of her diaper, a kind of ecstatic emptiness taking root in the pleasure centers of her brain.  All done. Empty, but in a good way. Empty on the inside. Warm and mushy on the outside. So good.

 

A split second later, her vision unfogged, and fully came back to herself, her face broken out into a cold sweat and the tremendous load in the back of her panties was being held close to her once smooth silky skin. Taking in the only two women she could even consider peers, she saw the looks on their faces.  Susie was sympathetic, but distinctly uncomfortable. Kelsey had a mixture of schadenfreude and mortification. Dakota remembered how absolutely zonked out and out of her own head Kelsey had looked during the movie. Is that how Dakota had looked just now?

 

 “Bafwoom breaks, yeah?” Dakota asked, cringing all the while. Why was she talking so funny?  She remembered the pacifier between her lips and spit it out yet again. “Be right back,” she said more clearly.  As fast as she could, Dakota started waddling to the nearest grown-up, trying not to cry.

(Kelsey)

 

Kelsey colored the duck blue.  The so-called “rules session” they’d been working on had kind of fell flat after Dakota had pooped herself in front of everyone. Shared embarrassment, revulsion, and Kelsey’s own particular brand of “not so funny when it happens to you, is it?” schadenfreude kind of shut down any form of parliamentary procedure or critical thinking for the time being.

 

After a quick review, all of their rules boiled down to “don’t try to hurt each other”, “act as adult as possible”, and “try to help each other act like an adult”, anyways.  Kelsey supposed those were the three most important rules anyways. And so the three of them had filled in the remaining playground time by swapping background stories.

 

They were all locals.  All went to different high schools.  Susan- or maybe it was Susie, Kelsey was having the darndest time keeping that part straight for some reason-and Kelsey had both gone to the same college, but if they’d ever crossed paths, it wasn’t remarkable enough for either of them to remember.  Unsurprisingly, Dakota hadn’t gone past high school and had spent the last few years “doing odd jobs” while “looking for ‘the one’”. It took everything for Kelsey not to cough ‘slut’, but rule number one was that there was a ceasefire in effect. Something about that bitch in the onesie brought out the worst in Kelsey.

 

Now, they’d all been moved inside, out of the heat of the day, and kept themselves busy at a table filled with coloring books and crayons.

 

She wasn’t allowed to attack Dakota, they were no closer to figuring out how they all ended up as perpetual two-year-olds (at best), and boredom was starting to set in. With boredom came discomfort, and irritation, and that would lead to hostility.  So for now, she colored the duck blue.

 

“Shouldn’t that be a different color?”  It was a Dakota, of course. Both of the other woman rested their hands in their chins.  “Ducks aren’t really that color.”

Still spreading the blue around on the duck’s paper feathers, Kelsey looked up at Dakota.  She had her chin in her hands, her eyes half closed, like a cat eyeing a mouse but too lazy to pounce.  The hair on the back of the ex-psych major’s neck stood on edge. Dakota had put in that rule about “calling each other out,” so she’d have a safe way to bring everyone down, Kelsey knew; even if it was a good rule.  “That’s true,” Kelsey said looking her new nemesis in the eye, “but I’m mostly doing this for the kinesthetic stimulation.”

 

“Hmmmm?”  Susan intoned, her eyes coming a bit more alive at the sound of more advanced vocabulary coming from a peer’s mouth.

 

Still coloring the duck blue, Kelsey said in her most clinical voice, “I enjoy the act of moving the crayon around the paper.  I’m not trying to make art, realistic or otherwise. I’m fidgeting.” Without changing her tone she looked to Dakota. “Is that grown-up enough?”

 

The bitch in the green onesie bit her lip and nodded, reluctantly.  “Yeah. That’s fair.” Then she conceded, “There’s stuff like adult coloring books, too, so I guess coloring isn’t THAT childish.”  Neither one would admit it, but Kelsey had the distinct feeling that they were starting to respect each other, if not like one another.

 

“Back to our problem?”  Susan asked. “How did we get this way?”

 

Dakota scoffed.  “What does it matter how we got like this?  What’s important is how can we get back to the way things used to be.”

 

The girl with the glasses explained, “Maybe if we figure out how this happened, we can figure out how to undo it.”

 

“You find a guy with broken legs,” Dakota said, turning her entire body to face Susan, “who cares if he got in a car accident, or a tree fell on him?  You don’t unbreak them by picking the tree back up or putting the car in reverse.”

 

“Now you’re just being contrarian,” Kelsey said.

 

The blonde bitch grumbled something that might have been “Alright…” and then turned away from Susan.

 

A moment or two passed and Susan started again.  “What was the last thing you were doing before you ended up like this?”

 

“You think everyone was doing something that made us into giant babies?” Kelsey asked.  “That seems unlikely.”

 

Susan adjusted her glasses and smoothed out her dress.  “Maybe not. But I’m betting there’s a reason why we’re the only three who remember-“

 

“As far as we know,” Dakota interjected.  “Could be more.”

 

“Contrarian,” Kelsey said.   Dakota shut up and moved for her pacifier.  A sideways glance from the other two stopped her.

 

Dakota rolled her eyes and huffed.  “You wanna know what I was doing before my potty training went away?” she asked, rhetorically. “I was giving my boyfriend a blowjob so that he wouldn’t feel bad I turned his marriage proposal down...in front of his family…at his birthday party.”  The other two stared in stunned silence. “What?” she smirked. “Too much information?”

 

Susan took off her glasses and set them on the table.  Leaning back in the little plastic chair, she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.  “Wow,” she said. “You’re a terrible person.” The tone was more clinical than irritated, though there was a clear note of exasperation.  “That has got to be one of the most disgusting things I’ve heard.”

 

“Don’t be a prude, Susie” Dakota said, clearly enjoying the attention.

 

“It’s Susan. Not Susie.”

 

The former psych-major spoke up, lest the topic derail even more.  “It’s not the B.J,” Kelsey said. “It’s that you just so casually admitted to using sex to manipulate someone.”

 

If Dakota was embarrassed by this, it didn’t show.  “It was complicated. He surprised me with the proposal.  I didn’t want to marry him. But I didn’t want to ruin the party or break off the relationship.”

 

“I didn’t want to think that this might be some kind of cosmic punishment,” Susan said, slipping her glasses back on and nervously bouncing her stuffed bunny on her knee.  “But I’d say that’s a definite maybe that this is some kind of ironic twist.”

 

Something about that bothered Kelsey.  “But Susie-“

 

“Susan”

 

“-Susan, that would mean we deserved this as some kind of punishment, too.” She gestured to Dakota, “Like, thematically I get how turning a…a…gold digger- no offense-“

 

“None taken.”

“-into basically a sexless toddler could be seen as some kind of punishment, but what were we doing that got us like this?”  A beat passed and Kelsey couldn’t help but ask the first question that flashed across her brain. “Were you having sex, too?”

 

Susan shook her head, and Kelsey immediately felt a wave of relief wash over her.  If the linking theme between them was ‘sex’ that’d either mean she was the odd woman out, or that she had some VERY complicated feelings about Dr. Seuss.

 

“I was having an argument with my Mommy,” Susan said.  “I didn’t want to take over the family business. Then she told me that I was acting like a little kid…and then this happened.”

 

Dakota had grabbed a coloring book and was flipping through it like it was a fashion magazine; not so much examining the pictures of cartoon animals as briefly registering they were there before flipping to the next one.  “So you were in a fight about growing up with your Mom,” Dakota said. “What about you, Kelsey?”

 

Kelsey flushed hot.  What if this was somehow her fault?  Should she lie? No. Proper conclusions couldn’t be reached if the data was faulty. “I was memorizing Fox in Socks,” she admitted.  Now it was her turn to be stared at. More context. Quick. “It was for a fluff class,” she explained. “I had to recite poetry.” That ought to be enough to satisfy their curiosity.

 

“Still,” it was Susan, not Dakota, that spoke up.  “Isn’t it kind of weird that you were doing something very connected with kid stuff when things went crazy?”

 

“Yeah, but you weren’t,” Kelsey said, starting to feel defensive “I thought we were looking for patterns, and not isolated examples.”

 

Susan plopped her bunny on the table, as if shelving her own hypocrisy.  “Speaking of patterns,” she said, “you’re pretty involved in coloring, there.”

 

“Kinesthetic stimulation,” Kelsey said, putting the blue crayon down- she was almost finished anyways.  The accusations were starting to fly again, and each of them were instinctively trying to avoid giving the others ammo.

 

Oh God, Kelsey thought, is this my fault?

 

Smelling blood, Dakota jumped in and tapped on the picture of the duck.  “You’re staying in the lines, mostly. That’s a little more than scribbling or fidgeting.  You’re full on coloring. And you seemed pretty into that cartoon flick before you-”

 

“OKAY!” Kelsey boomed. The entire daycare froze and stared to the art table the three of them had commandeered.  Boys and girls in their twenties looked up from their blocks and tinker toys. The daycare workers all stared at her, ready to spring into action, ready to pounce to intervene should another tantrum erupt.  Only the people involved in the changing of diapers -whether giving or receiving- stayed on task. Damnit! She was caught, wasn’t she? No point in justifying it anymore. Time to come clean. “OKAY!” she shouted again, forcing herself to sound cheery.  “I LIKE COLORING!” The room collectively shrugged and went back to their puppets and dollies.

 

Forcing herself to lean in and whisper, Kelsey confided, “And stuffed animals. And Play-Doh. And Dr. Seuss.  And cartoons. And lots of this stuff.” Susan looked confused. Dakota looked smug. “But I don’t like to wear diapers.  And even if I did, I wouldn’t want everyone to be forced into it.”

 

It was Dakota who broke the silence.  It started as a smirk that spread into a grin, that broke out into a chuckle until it became a full out guffawing belly laugh. “Oh my God!” she shrieked with laughter.  Kelsey couldn’t tell whether it was mocking laughter or crazy laughter. “You’re a little!”

 

“A little what?” Kelsey asked.

 

“No, I mean you’re a little.” Dakota repeated herself.

 

“I mean, I know I’m kind of short, but…”

 

Dakota held up a hand to silence her.  It worked. “You’re a little,” she said.  “You like this kind of stuff. A fun Saturday night for you is Chuck-E-Cheese and silly-string, yeah?”

 

“I think it’s just being ‘young at heart’,” Susan said.

 

Kelsey shook her head.  “It’s not a kink. I’m not that interested in sex, to be honest.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be sexual,” Dakota replied.  She looked to Kelsey and then to Susan. Kelsey wasn’t exactly sure what her expression was, suddenly feeling very numb, but Susan clearly wasn’t happy at the woman in the onesie.  “I’m not shaming,” Dakota held up her hands in defense. “I’m just calling a spade a spade. And there are people out there who are into this kind of stuff, with or without diapers.”

 

“How do-?” Susan started to ask, but then stopped herself.

 

Dakota answered anyways.  “I went through a Fifty Shades of Grey phase,” she explained.  “Figured I could find my own Christian. Went on Fetlife. Did some digging.  Mostly creepers and uggos into weird shit. None of them rich.”

 

Kelsey dug her nails into her naked thighs so hard she thought they might bleed.  Not only was she some kind of freak, but she might be responsible for the entire world being turned into a diapered side show.  “That still doesn’t explain why everyone in the world besides us thinks this is normal.”

 

Whether it was nervous habit, or an attempt to make Kelsey feel better about herself, Susan reached for her stuffed animal and placed it back in her lap.  “Yeah, but there is a pattern,” she said. “You were attract…interested in kid stuff, I was trying to get away from being a kid-“

 

“And I was very much an adult doing adult things,” Dakota chimed in.

 

“Debatable,” Kelsey said, “But I see your point. There’s a spectrum. So you think we’re some kind of trinity or something?  Like the Fates from Greek Myth or something?”

 

Susan bounced the rabbit on her knee.  “I don’t know.”

 

“And I don’t care,” Dakota said.  “I don’t care about the ‘why’s’ as much as the ‘how’s’.  As in ‘how do we get out of this mess?’.”

 

“Short of divine intervention,” Susan said, “I don’t know.”  All three of them looked upward and saw only the ceiling. That didn’t work.

 

“Frankly,” Dakota said, “I wouldn’t care if the Devil Himself came through those doors and offered us a way out.  I’d take it. I’d sell my soul to get out of diapers and back into a thong.” Again, all three of them glanced towards the doors of the daycare.  Still nothing.

 

Worth a shot.

 

Kelsey laughed dryly.  “Speaking of Hell,” Kelsey said, “This is like Rugrats crossed with No Exit, y’know?”  Clearly they didn’t. She was met with blank looks from both of her companions. “Rugrats? Babies that talk?”

 

“We know what Rugrats are,” Susan said.  “What’s the other reference?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Kelsey said.  “Sorry. No Exit is a play about people going to Hell, and their punishment is to be locked in a room together for all eternity.  They don’t know each other beforehand, and they have nothing in common, and they just drive each other crazy. It’s where the phrase ‘Hell is Other People’ comes from.”

 

More awkward silence from both of her companions. Eye contact was not made by any party.  Susan twisted her bunny’s ears. Dakota was starting to re-examine her coloring book. “I see your point,” Susan said, breaking the silence just when Kelsey was starting to grab the blue crayon and finish coloring her duck.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

More awkward silence.  “Does that mean the others are all proof that ignorance is bliss?” Susan offered.

 

“They seem to be enjoying it.” Dakota said.

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

The silence continued.

 

And continued.

 

And continued.

 

“Why are you coloring that duck red, anyways?” Susan asked.  “I don’t know any ducks that are red. Not that shade anyways.”

 

Kelsey’s head shot up.  “What did you say?”

 

“Red duck,” Susan repeated, “Why are you making your duck red?”

 

“Are you colorblind or something?” Kelsey asked, fear welling up in her.  “That’s not red.”

 

Dakota looked at Kelsey’s duck.  “Fuck no, it’s not red,” she agreed.  “It’s green.” There wasn’t a trace of irony or mockery in Dakota’s voice.  She wasn’t pushing buttons. She wasn’t trolling. She was completely serious.

 

“Um…” Kelsey spoke up.  “It’s blue. It’s a blue duck.”

 

Susan scoffed, her eyes darting from person to person, looking for the joke.  “It’s red.”

 

“It’s green.”

 

“Guys,” Kelsey said, her voice trembling.  “I think we might have forgotten our colors.”

 

Dakota hissed under her breath.  “Shit.”

 

Susan reached for Kelsey’s blue crayon- though it might’ve been red, or green; there wasn’t a consensus.  On the back of a coloring sheet she scribbled something on the paper and showed it to the other two. “If it’s one thing I know, it’s numbers,” she said.  I was an accounting major. What number is this?” Dakota leaned back, crossing her arms and biting her lip, nervously eyeing the pacifier dangling from her collar.

 

Squinting, Kelsey looked at what the other girl had drawn.  It might’ve been a number. It might’ve been just lines on paper.  Honestly, she couldn’t tell. “One?” Dakota said, obviously guessing.  “It’s one, right?”

 

“It’s four,” Susan said, sounding almost offended.  “Like two plus two is four.”

 

Dakota frowned.  “Doesn’t look like a four to me.”

 

“Or we’ve forgotten what four is supposed to look like,” Kelsey spoke up.  Then she added, “Or how to write it.”

 

Grabbing another crayon -the color of which would likely be debated between the three- Dakota wrote something on another piece of paper, and showed it.  “What does this say?” she asked.

 

“I’m more of a numbers gal,” Susan admitted.  “I don’t know if I know that letter.”

 

“Letter?” Dakota frowned.  “There’s more than one letter here.”

 

“No there isn’t,” Kelsey corrected her.  “That’s just one letter…maybe.”

 

“It’s my name,” Dakota insisted.  “It says Dakota.”

 

Shaking her head, Susan said, “Maybe YOU think it says Dakota, but I don’t even know if that’s a B or not.”

 

Her throat drying up as her heart continued to pound harder and harder in her chest, Kelsey’s child psychology courses were all flying back into her brain.  Children often learned to write by insisting one letter stood for an entire word, and Susan didn’t seem to realize that Dakota didn’t start with a ‘B’ it started with a…a…shit!   “We’re being affected more than we think,” Kelsey said, gravely. “We’re going backwards, too. Just slower than everyone else!”

 

“Okay kids!” one of the daycare workers announced, interrupting their collective.  

 

“Time to clean up.  It’s snack time!” She came over to the table.  “Come on girls. Clean up the crayons. It’s snack time.” She picked up the picture and looked at it.  “Oh, such a pretty orange duck, Kelsey! Would you like me to put it up on the wall?”

 

(Susan)

 

Some people cry in the heat of the moment, when the explosions go off and the world is crumbling around them.  They’re caught up in the heat of the moment and feel the grief and fear and rage and angst when their heart is broken, or their car is crashed, or the flesh-eating monster is breathing down their neck. Others compartmentalize.  They’re emotionally overwhelmed and so to avoid a complete catatonic shutdown and to continue functioning they turn that vulnerable part of themselves off; they do their best to become clinical. They don’t deny what’s going on or what terrible fate has befallen them, but they just don’t let it emotionally sink in until there’s a time when they can afford to be vulnerable.

 

If they’re lucky, their tears come after the giant has been slain, the obstacles have been surmounted, and their long -lost child has been reunited with them.  These are always happy tears. The unlucky ones save up their tears and it comes at the worst times: after the funeral, or in an empty house, or in the quiet of a hospital room after visiting hours are over, and no one but a strange nurse is present to give even the coldest of comfort. These are the most bitter tears of all.

 

In the relative calm of the Big Little Daycare, surrounded by people she couldn’t honestly call her friends, while snacks were being passed out, those bitter tears threatened to pour out of Susan.

 

She’d lost her potty training.  She’d lost her dignity. She was wearing an outfit that she didn’t want to be caught dead in, and that wasn’t even taking the diaper into account.  She’d lost any and all social standing or path to independence. And now she had confirmation that she was losing her mind along with everything else.  Letters, colors, even written numbers; all seemed lost to her. She dared not try counting, or reciting the alphabet for fear that she’d find out just how little she was capable of….but how would she know?

 

Once a smart and independent young woman, Susan was regressing in her skills so much as to not even actively realize what she was losing until it was specifically pointed out to her.  And now, it was snack time. This was as good a time for all of her frustration to bubble over as any.

 

Glasses pushed up to the top of her head, Susan started rubbing at her eyes, swatting away the tears before they could properly dribble down.  Neither of her two similarly afflicted allies were stupid or insensitive enough to ask ‘what’s wrong’, but she felt a petite hand rest on her shoulder from across the table and give her a gentle squeeze.  Kelsey. “Sorry, Susie.”

 

“Susan,” Susan said without looking up.  “Not Susie.” She sniffed. “Only my Mommy calls me Susie.”

 

“Do you normally call her Mo?-ow!” Dakota said before Kelsey cut her off with a hard smack on the arm.  “What?!” she demanded. “It’s a for real question!”

 

The would-be accountant looked up from her own lap.  “Huh?”

 

“You know you’ve been referring to your mother as ‘Mommy’ this entire, time, right?”  Dakota said, before staring daggers back at Kelsey. Susan sat up a little straighter.  She had? Mentally, she replayed the last several hours.

 

“Oooooh.”

 

“Toldja she didn’t realize it.”  Dakota again. Not that Susan fully registered it.  She’d retreated into herself. Her mother had been just ‘Mom’ for the longest time; or ‘Janet’ when Susan was mad at her.  But ‘Mommy’? No one but spoiled little girly girls called their mothers ‘Mommy’. Her mother hadn’t been ‘Mommy’ in Susan’s mind since at least kindergarten, when the other kids- especially the boys- made fun of her for it.  And Susan hadn’t been ‘Susie’ since long before then. She hadn’t thought of herself as ‘Susie’ since…since…

 

A whiff of stale urine and feces and the sound of muted crinkling drew Susan out of herself.  “Guys,” she said, “I thought we agreed, no dirty di-“ Both Kelsey and Dakota were both looking directly at her.  “It’s not me, is it?” She felt the blood drain away from her face, then flood safely back to normal when the others shook their heads, grimly.  Susan followed their eyes and her nose towards the source of the stench.

 

“Snack time!” a girl with long black braided hair said from behind Susan, the big snack cart being pushed behind her by a grown-up woman. “And it’s my turn to be the waitress! I’m helpin’! I’m a helper!”  Bingo.

 

Dakota was the first to growl, but Kelsey was the first to speak.  “No thanks, Alice, we’re not-“

 

“IIIIIIIIII’M HELPIN’!” Alice stomped her feet loudly.  “I’m helpin’! I’m helpin’! I’m helpin’!” Something about this girl seemed to rub both of Susan’s compatriots the wrong way, and Susan couldn’t quite put her finger on the why of it.


 

But before Susan could ask for a snack, a tiny pre-packaged vacuum sealed blueberry muffin was placed down in front of her.  Fair enough. Beggars didn’t always get to be choosers, and if muffins was all they had- A mini box of nilla wafers was slammed down in front of Kelsey, and a bag of plain potato chips slid towards Dakota.   The girl passing out the snacks started to waddle away, her backside sagging more than a little bit, when Kelsey called out. “Excuse me,” Susan called out to Alice. The girl who’d slung the pre-packaged snacks at them so carelessly, without style, aplomb, or manners, stopped, even as the grown-up continued pushing the cart filled with snacks onward.

 

Alice tapped her foot impatiently.  “What?”

 

“Could I please have something else?” Susan asked, trying to sound as reasonable as possible.

 

In response, Alice got a saccharine sweet smile.  “Sorry. You don’t get ta choose. I’m waitress today. I choose who gets what snacks.  If you wanna trade, you can trade, I guess.”

 

“That’s not fai-“

 

Susan’s reply was cut off when Alice butted in and said “That’s how it works.  If you were a real waitress, you’d know.” With a flourish, Alice turned around and “accidentally” bumped into Susan, even going so far as to step back a bit so that her behind all out collided with the young woman’s head. “Whoopsie daisy,” she said, barely feigning embarrassment as her steaming backside brushed up against the side of Susan’s cheek.  She could feel warmth coming off Alice...but she knew it wasn’t body heat. There were too many layers between the other girl’s bottom and Susan’s face for her to feel plain old body heat. Then there was the feeling of a wet, almost pulpy smoosh up against her face.


Susan had been back in diapers for less than a full day, but even she knew that a dry, clean diaper didn’t feel like that.  The godawful smell was a none too subtle a hint, either. Alice might have said “Oopsie daisy,” but the similarities to the flower ended there.  That meant that...that…

 

Looking over to her classmates for help, Susan could only make out Kelsey’s completely shocked expression and Dakota’s desperately trying to stop herself from laughing out loud.

 

 Right then. Right then as Alice waddled off to continue her reign of snack food tyranny, acting as if she hadn’t just DEFILED Susan with her rank and disgusting mess.  That was the moment when something deep down inside Susan snapped. She had lost a lot of things over the last twenty-four hours. She couldn’t dress herself, or remember her colors, or read or write, or even control her bladder and bowels…but God dammit, she could wait on tables, AND HOW DARE THIS BITCH SAY THAT SUSAN DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT WHILE DOING SUCH A PISS POOR JOB AT IT HERSELF!

 

Alice might have realized that she was pushing buttons.  Susan’s Mommy had long worked at or been a presence at Ma’s Diner even before Susan had been born.  Even with this strange hiccup in reality that made everyone her age a social toddler, people seemed to have most of their memories intact and their personalities were always spot on.  So Alice was likely a terrible person- ‘Dakota Lite’ if you will- even before this. All things considered, she may or may not have known that her last comment meant war…but it did.

 

“Miss…miss…” Susan shot her hand upward before realizing she had no idea what the people who worked here were named.  Even if they had their names on their shirts, Susan was sadly confident that she couldn’t read them. Instead, Susan settled for shouting “TEACHER! TEEEEEEACHER!”  She was expected to be a little dumb, might as well play it up.

 

The cart stopped.  The recognized adult doubled back, and knelt over to make eye contact.  “Yes, Susan?” she asked. “Do you need help opening your snack?”

With big puppy dog eyes and a completely innocent smile, Susan looked up at her captor and said “No ma’am. It’s just I think Alice needs ta be changed. She’s ‘tinky.”  For effect, Susan waved her hand in front of her face and pinched her nose, making it a point to giggle as if she weren’t really offended by the smell, but imitating what ‘adults’ did around babies with shitty pants.

 

The daycare worker pushing the snack tray seemed to consider this, her mouth twisting off to one side as her eyes moved to the other direction.  Then she said, “That’s so nice of you, Susan. I’ll make sure to check and change her after she’s done passing out the snacks.”

 

The mask of innocence melted into one of thoughtful introspection; as if Susan were considering her words very carefully, even though she’d instantly known what she was going to say. “Buuuuut,” she said,  “if she’s walkin’ around with poop in her diapee, and handin’ out food that doesn’t seem very san…san….” Sanitary. The word was ‘sanitary’. Susan knew this, of course, but everyone seemed to view her as a cute but naïve and ignorant, so why not use it to her advantage to disarm people? (Ye gods, was this what flirting was like?  She felt a little bit dirty at the thought.)

 

In the corner of her eye, Susan saw that both Dakota and Kelsey were slack-jawed.  Apparently, Susan was more convincing that she’d thought. She turned briefly to them and gave them a wink to let them know that she was still very much in the driver’s seat.

“Sanitary?”  the teacher took the bait.  “Oh sweetie, I think it’s fine.  The food is all pre-packaged anyways and her poopy is in her diaper.”

 

“But she’s not wearin’ gloves or nothin’,” Susan whined a bit.  “What if she scratched her butt?”

 

“It’s fine, honey.  Quit worrying.” Then the teacher added.  “Would you like me to get you a new snack from the cart?  That way you wouldn’t have to worry?”

 

Susan smoothed out her dress and continued to do her best to look cute and stupid, like there wasn’t a thought in her head.  “Oh, it’s not me I’m worried ‘bout, teacher ma’am,” she said. “It’s the ‘specter.”

 

“The what…?” the middle aged woman echoed. All the while, Alice was giving kids random goodies off the cart, oblivious to the verbal chess match that was going on right behind her poop covered backside.

 

Time for her final move. “My Mommy always tells me we gotta be extra careful ‘round

food or else the health ‘specter will come and get us.”  She shivered a bit, as if the health inspector was some kind of bogey man that Restaurateurs warned their children about.  Susan saw the older woman mouth the words ‘Health Inspector’.

 

Checkmate.

 

“Alice,” the lady called out.  Alice looked over her shoulder after giving someone a box of crackers that they clearly didn’t want.  Her diaper was almost swelling out of her leggings. The fabric was stretched so taught that Susan could pretty much see through it and gaze upon the big white diaper...only it wasn’t white anymore. Was that a tinge of brown in the back?  Girl really did need a change, after all. “Time to get a diaper change.”

Alice rotated around fully to face the teacher, her mouth agape in protest.  The forbies behind her immediately started laughing out loud, their eyes bugging out of their heads at what was going on in Alice’s backside.  Her rump might as well have been in a funhouse mirror. “But I’m a waitress!”

 

“You need to be changed honey,” the daycare lady said, firmly, brooking no argument.

 

“But…but…”

 

“Snack time can wait until after you’re all cleaned up, missy.”

Dakota’s hand shot up.  “Oooooo! Oooo! We can help!” she said.  “We’re good helpers. We can finsh what Alice started while she goes and gets changed! We’re the bestest helpers!” she turned to Kelsey.  “Right?”

 

“Huh?” Kelsey said before catching on.  “Oh yeah! Right! We’ll help.”

 

“We’ll pass out the snacks,” Susan said.  “We’ve done it like a billion times before.”  This was a lie as far as Susan was concerned, but considering the altered history of events that her mommy- Mom…her mother…Janet- had described to her, it was likely true as far as the rest of the daycare knew.

 

“But I’M the waitress!” Alice stomped her feet again.

 

Rising to her feet, Susan rocked back on her heels and played with the hem of her too short dress, tilting her head for maximum cuteness.  “I watch my Mommy do it all the time,” she insisted.

 

“Well….”

 

Then in a moment of pure fortuity, in their most adorable, loveably manipulative tones, all three of the girls said, “Pweeeeeease!”

 

The sigh that came out of the daycare worker’s lips was the last of her fight leaving her lungs. “…all right.”

 

“Nooooooooo!” Alice screamed as she was dragged towards a nearby changing room by her wrist, her feet dragging uselessly.  “I! DON’T! WANNA! BE! CHANGED! I’M! A! WAITRESS!”

 

Meanwhile, the only three sane people left in the world decided to have a bit of fun.  “Glove up, girls,” Susan says. “If we’re gonna play restaurant we’re going to do it right.”  Fortunately, it being a daycare for giant babies, there was always a bottle of hand sanitizer and a box of disposable gloves within easy reach, and all three girls were properly gloved.

 

As Alice screamed from the changing room as she was being stripped of both her leggings and her own bit of fun, the other so-called adults in the room looked on curiously, waiting to see if the trio would use their newfound freedom to make their own lives harder or easier.  In short, they weren’t sure if harmless fun was about to happen, or a full blown food fight. “What now?” Kelsey asked.

 

“Hold off on opening your snacks!” she yelled across the tables of adult children.  “Snack time is under new management! Our wait staff will be around shortly to serve you and take your orders!”

 

Murmurs of ‘restaurant’ and ‘game’ and ‘pretend’ and ‘play’ circled around the collective snack tables.  Grown-ups smiled and nodded approvingly, chuckling to themselves even as they kept a careful watch for mischief makers.   

As Dakota rounded up the snacks for redistribution, Kelsey asked, “So I guess you’re the boss here.  What’s the plan?”

 

Fully in her element, or as close to as possible, Susan smirked confidently. “I’ll take the orders and shout them back.  It’s like a game. Listen to what I’m saying. Everything is going to be in code to keep you sharp.”

 

“How are you going to take the orders?” Kelsey asked.  “You can’t write anything down, anymore.”

 

The ex-waitress tapped her forehead. “They’ll be up here. I’ll remember them.”

Dakota came back, her arms filled with the disgusting and bland snacks Alice had deigned to pass out, likely keeping the good stuff for herself.  “Uh…you can’t even remember your colors.”

 

“There are things that I knew before I even learned colors.” With that, Susan zipped around the tables taking orders and committing them to memory.  She’d lost most of her academic skills, and it would take a miracle for her to be an accountant again, but not even her life foisting some bizarre fantasy world onto her could take this task.  “I need two spare tires, a heap of tooty fruity creepy crawlies, and a Wayne Brady, hold the moo juice.”

 

Though there were no words spoken, the collective sentiment from the entire room as Susan waddle-trotted back to the snack cart was one giant “Huh?”  The diapered waitress sighed. “That’s two donuts, some gummy worms, and an Oreo but no milk to dunk it in.”

 

“Ooooooooooh!”

 

And thus the game began in earnest:

 

“Bean paste on a raft and put a roof on it!”  meant peanut butter and cracker sandwiches. “Middle aged lady” was code for a muffin top.  “Everything but all that,” was a bag of chips. A box of animal crackers was a “Travelin’ Zoo”, and a “Snakey Rainbow” was Skittles.

 

Everyone laughed, and once Kelsey and Dakota- arguably the only other two women their age in the world capable of understanding the linguistic tricks of Greasy Spoon lingo- got the idea, things moved ahead and a brisk pace.  The giant children would purposefully try to not copy one another, eager to see what their favorite snacks would be translated into, giggling while they waited to order, then guffawing once their goldfish crackers were dubbed “a dry aquarium.”

 

“I need ants on a log!”

 

“What?” Dakota asked, searching the snack tray for something, anything that might match that description.

 

Susan laughed a bit. “Y’know…celery stick, with peanut butter on it and raisins on the top.  You don’t call it ants on a log?”

 

“Oooooh!”  

 

Part waitress, part performer, and completely in charge; Susan was almost beginning to feel like her old self. Almost.  Even as a game, this was refreshing and self-affirming. Come to think of it, it was a bit of a game back in the good old days, wasn’t it?  The good old days…a thought that made her shudder a little, and her bladder release. The sudden wet warmth in her diaper told her that she needed to get changed, but her own personal work ethic entwined with the joy of play made her not want to stop.  She hadn’t thought of her time working in Mommy’s restaurant as The Good Old Days before now. If only there had been a way to know she was in the good old days before she had left them.

 

Don’t focus on that, she chided herself.  Just stay in the moment. She could change AFTER everyone had been served.

 

“Almost done, Susie!” Dakota called out.

 

Susan turned back and called out.  “I know!” then tacked on, “And don’t call me Susie!”  Almost out of breath from all the hustling she’d been doing, taking and delivering orders, she went to the last forever baby and tapped her on the shoulder. “Can I take your order?”

 

A fake smile and scornful eyes framed by braided black hair turned around and met her gaze.  “I dunno…Susie. What do you think I should have?”

 

“My name’s not Susie, it’s Susan.”

 

“Sorry, Susie.” Alice said, a cat and canary grin and a gaze that wished death upon her plastered on her face.  “I won’t make that mistake again, Susie. Oops!”

 

“Stop calling me-“

 

“Susie.”

 

“My name is-“

 

“I know. I know.  Sorry. Susan.”

 

“May I take your order?” Susan repeated herself through a clenched jaw.

 

“I dunno.  You’re the waitress. You should pick for me….Susie.”

 

“I AM NOT SUSIE!”

 

“Your mommy calls you Susie, Susie.” Alice mocked.  “Why can’t I call you Susie?”

Susan had had it!  “Nobody calls me ‘Susie’ except my MOMMY and….and…and…”

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

Gentle Reader,

 

Memory is a funny, fickle thing.  Recent memories are akin to documentaries and news clips playing in the cinema of your mind; playing exactly as they happened, beat for beat.  Fond but distant memories become heavily dramatized, changing with each retelling and reminiscence; actors perfecting their part and improvising as the audience responds to each line.

 

Then there’s the long forgotten and buried memories; the ones that happened so long ago that you don’t consciously remember them, and upon visiting them seem much like an old Fairy Tale.  They’re stories that happened to someone who looked very much like you, but who wasn’t you. They’re not memories but distant histories at best, or fairy tales that morals can be gleaned from. This is in fact a lie, but as in all lies, there is an element of truth to this:  When we are thirty, we are not who we were when we were twenty-one. Nor is that twenty-one year old version of ourselves very much like us when we were twelve; and that twelve-year-old is a stranger to us when were aged two.

Philosophically speaking, this is a small (if impotent) mercy that the Lords of Fate and Hearth bestow upon us: The ability to remember the past not as if it happened to us, but to someone else; someone who we’ve long since outgrown and left behind.  It makes it easier to shrug off the mistakes; especially since those mistakes so rarely affect us in the now.

 

It is with that tender (if impotent) mercy that the following memory is presented in the manner and tone: As a Fairy Tale.

 

Once upon a time there were three little girls who were the best of friends.  Their names were Susie, Dakota, and Kelsey

 

Susie was a pretty girl, resplendent in her infantile femininity; her Mommy clothing her in only the frilliest and most beautiful of toddler dresses and gowns.  She wanted nothing more than to be just like her Mommy when she grew up.

 

Dakota was sweet and angelic. There was never a little tot as nice and mild in temperament as she; always sharing and giving of herself, always looking to make friends.

 

Kelsey was insightful and articulate for her age.  She is what her parents called “wise beyond her years” though perhaps “precocious” would be a better word for it.

 

The three had formed an instant and unbreakable bond that they shared even before they had gained the ability to talk as the adults did.  Alas, no bond is truly unbreakable, as the three girls found out. Even though they were practically still babes in their mother’s arms, still sleeping in their cribs and needing diapers to keep their clothes otherwise pristine, they were growing up and moving on far too fast.

 

They were almost too old for daycare, their parents had all told them.   Over the summer, they would be potty trained now that they were old enough and their parents would have the time.  Then they’d have another year, at most, until they went to something called “pre-school” and although their parents didn’t specifically tell them this- not being particularly aware of the depth of their friendship- they would never see each other again.  Their little town was just big enough so that all three would go to different schools when the time came. How would they see each other again?

 

“I don’t wanna grow up,” said Susie.  “Growin’ up sounds poopy.”

 

“Me neiver,” Dakota agreed, sucking on her pacifier.  “I don’t wanna get big. I don’t wanna lose my fwiends.”

 

“Everybody gets big,” Kelsey replied.  “But I don’t wanna grow up.” Then seeing that her friends didn’t fully appreciate the nuance, she explained.  “It’s differnt.

 

Yet what could they do?  A fair question indeed, gentle reader.  A fair question indeed.

They found their answer one early morning.  The sun was still down, and the stars were still out, and their Mommies and Daddies had entrusted them to the tender ministrations of the daycare workers.  For their entertainment, an animated feature about an old man making a wish upon a star and the adventure of the little wooden boy that came alive because of it.  It wasn’t the true story, but rather a retelling as told by a liar and a fraud named Walt. Yet even in lies there can be truth.

 

“When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires

Will come to you.”

 

“I gotta idea!” Susie leapt to her feet and ran to the window.  “We just gotta wish upon a star, and we we’ll stop growin’ up!”

 

“Everybody gets big, Susie.” Kelsey said, following her.  “My Mommy and Daddy told me so.”

 

“Yeah, but you said it’s differnt!” Susie replied.  “We hafta get bigger. But we can still be babies if we wanna. We just gotta wish hard!”

 

Dakota agreed. “That’th how it worked in the movie. Just wish hard”

 

“But that’s justa movie.” Kelsey said.  “Stars are really really far. It’d take forever for a wish like that to get there.”

 

“How long?” Susie asked.

 

“Like…twenty years or somethin’?!’ Dakota suggested, twenty being the highest number she knew.

 

“Yeah!” Kelsey agreed.  “It’d take forever. Twenty years.”

 

“Better late than never,” Susie replied.  “That’s what my Mommy always says. C’mon.  Let’s wish.”

 

So they did.

 

“I wish we’d never have to grow up, even if we get big,” said Susie.

 

“I wish we could always play together and be bestest friends forever,” added Kelsey

 

“And that no other kid will have to grow up either,” finished Dakota, not wanting to be selfish.  If they were going to reap the benefits of the their wish, so should everyone.


 

Not knowing what else to say, they sealed it with something they had heard their parents say when they were making wishes.  “Hommen”.

 

And so the wish floated up, up, up, into the heavens.  And because the girls in their sincere childlike belief believed that the star, a strange kind of god- something that was once worshipped as a god long ago as a matter of fact- would hear their wish/prayer, it did.  And since they thought it would take twenty years for their innocent but powerful invocation to reach the star, that’s exactly how long it took.

 

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

“… and my best friends. My best friends called me Susie.”  Dakota finished the sentence as a long forgotten memory welled up from her subconscious.  The bitter, angry, sorrowful tears threatened Susan no more; they came in full force and attacked with all thier might.  Gripped in panic and remorse, the truth spilled out of her mouth like words from a prophet. “Guys!” she bawled, falling into.  “It was us! We fucked the world! We did it! Our fault! Our fault!”

 

And the words rang true in Dakota and Kelsey’s ears and they knew them to be fact. As if her words were a key to their own long agos, long forgotten memories of who they once were-and were once again becoming-resurfaced; the same two words echoing again and again in their collective grey matter.

 

Our fault.

 

Our fault.

 

Our fault.

 

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4 hours ago, Personalias said:

 

 

 

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

“… and my best friends. My best friends called me Susie.”  Dakota finished the sentence as a long forgotten memory welled up from her subconscious.  The bitter, angry, sorrowful tears threatened Susan no more; they came in full force and attacked with all her might.  Gripped in panic and remorse, the truth spilled out of her mouth like words from a prophet. “Guys!” she bawled, falling into.  “It was us! We fucked the world! We did it! Our fault! Our fault!”

 

And the words rang true in Dakota and Kelsey’s ears and they knew them to be fact. As if her words were a key to their own long agos, long forgotten memories of who they once were-and were once again becoming-resurfaced; the same two words echoing again and again in their collective grey matter.

 

Our fault.

 

Our fault.

 

Our fault.

 

Damn I'm amazed at how high concept you managed to make this (slow claps)

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  • 2 weeks later...

That was an awesome new chapter. It was actually more like three separate chapters combined. I could feel satisfied with the story ending right here but if you say there’s still more coming that’s awesome.  I loved the irony of these three girls bringing this down upon themselves. I have no idea where this one is going but rest assured I am along for the full ride. I was pleased to be able to give it a like. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Sarah Penguin said:

At least their wishing didn't end up with people turning into superheated statues by transmuting their carbon into silicon, at least not yet *nodsnods* :)

Holy crap somebody else reads Charles Stross!?

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Friends,

 

What can defeat magic, this reality bending yet fundamental force of the cosmos?  What can possibly contend with something that makes wonders by working one’s will?  The foolish magician will say “nothing”. Nothing can beat magic. That’s why it’s “magic”.  Swords rust. Soldiers die. Eventually the sun and stars will burn out of existence. But magic? Magic is forever.  Magic wins.

 

Look around though, friends.  If magic is real, and so potent as to make the sky kiss the ground, why isn’t there more of it?  Even with the limitations of belief and the human psyche, all it would really take is two to three potent magicians to make belief a papier-mâché barrier.  Seeing is believing, isn’t it? So why haven’t we seen more of it?

 

Why are we not running around with our magic wands casting whatever spells need to be cast to make our lives more bearable.  Or at the very least, why are we not currently being ruled over by magical god kings as the legends of nearly every culture depict?

 

If you’ve read this far, you can surmise that the most “logical” reason isn’t “magic isn’t real”.  It’s because at some point in the forgotten history of humankind, magic was defeated and dispelled from reality; all of the potent energy of the mortal imagination and desire rendered latent, just waiting to be tapped into again.

 

The question still remains, though.  What can beat magic?

 

-An excerpt from “Do You Believe In Magic?” By Cornelius Crowley.

 

(Susie)

 

Tears made the room blurry.  They made Susie’s face hot and uncomfortable.  The hot wet feeling of them dripping down her cheek and onto her polka dot dress was a constant reminder of her own folly.  The little balloons of snot that bubbled out of her nose whenever she exhaled weren’t much better either.

 

She’d been crying for the better part of an hour, Susie estimated.  They had all been crying; Kelsey and Dakota, too. The other Forbies would be crying too if they knew what the three of them knew.  Any sane and rational person would.

 

They had doomed themselves.  They had doomed roughly everyone in the world who was close to their age.   All because of some stupid wish that had decided to come true twenty years too late.  No more college. No more jobs. No more cars, or sex, or money, or privacy, or anything that made being an adult bearable;  all because Susie and her little friends hadn’t wanted to grow up.

 

Susie had been the first to remember it, that fateful early morning in a daycare not unlike this one.  She wasn’t the last though. Her screeching, panicked cries of “Guys! It was us! We fucked the world! We did it!  Our fault! Our fault!” had not fallen on deaf ears. The world had been placed under a leaky faucet, but Susie could still recognize her companions clapping their hands over their mouth and screaming.

 

Whatever bit of mundane detritus that had kept that memory of that day trapped in the bowels of the girls’ subconscious had been swept away with Susie’s proclamation, and her own lone wail had become a chorus of shrieks and swears.

 

The swear words hadn’t fallen on the deaf ears of the grown-ups, either.  Hands on shoulders were shirked off, and admonitions and cries of “language!” were drowned out by a sonic sea of bellowing curses.

 

“TIME OUT!  ALL THREE OF YOU! TIME OUT!”

 

Susie hadn’t known who’d said it, hadn’t heard where the voice had come from, but something about that phrase had sparked something inside of her.

 

Time out?

 

Time out?!

 

She’d gone from diapers to underwear; from elementary school to graduation; from the kitchen of her mom’s greasy spoon to college; all waiting for the time when she could finally be her own person.  Now some cosmic force that was beyond her twenty-two year old comprehension- never mind her two year old comprehension-had yanked her back to the very beginning. And there she’d wait. Forever. Forever Mommy’s little girl needing to be dressed in frilly outfits, spoon fed in a high chair, pushed around in a stroller, and have her diaper checked and changed for her lest she get a rash.  Her entire life was in time out right now.

 

She’d looked down at Flopsy lying on the floor where the stuffed animal had been dropped.  “No fair.” Flopsy was right. If she was going to time out, she might as well earn it. Even Dakota had let out a yelp of surprise when the first chair went flying.

Then the second had happened.  Then the third. Then screams of fear and delight joined the three girl’s wailing as they became a living hurricane, tearing through the entire playroom in a blur of fury and misdirected self-hatred.  Snacks went sailing through the air. Blocks created a minefield along the floor. Tables became barricades as more of the forever babies joined in, though much more jovial than the three who started it.

 

It had been half food fight, half toddler temper tantrum, and half-prison riot.  Some part of Susie’s brain told her that there was something wrong about that, the math didn’t work out or something; but she couldn’t quite put her finger on the “why” as she had sent coloring pages ripped free from their books and crumpled into little balls hurtling ceiling word.

 

The great Big Little Daycare Riot didn’t last long, though.  From Susie’s vantage point, she’d been stuck as a twenty something toddler for a little over a day.  She and her fellow hell-pavers still retained memories of being a big girls, almost grown-ups themselves. To the rest of the world though, they’d never gotten as far as pre-school before their condition of being “forever babies” had been diagnosed.

 

That meant that the workers of the Big Little Daycare had existed in a world for sometime where their occupation was half nanny, half psychologist, and half insane asylum orderly.  Susie, Dakota, and Kelsey trashing the room was just another day at the office for them.

 

The other children were shuffled outside to the playground and in short order the three were cornered and contained, with adults pinning them to the floor as they uselessly thrashed and screamed.  The fight hadn’t lasted long after that.

 

The cleanup had.

 

The good news was that the Daycare had a strict “no spanking” policy.  The bad news is that that didn’t exempt Susie from punishment of any sort.  So while the rest of their class stuck in arrested development was having an impromptu play session outside, the three girls were stuck cleaning up their mess under adult supervision.

 

This was difficult, Susie found, because not only did she not remember how the playroom was supposed to look; her first visit being only a few hours ago, but she was having trouble with even more basic skills.

 

“Hey Dakota?  Do you remember where the coloring books are s’posed to go?”

Dakota looked up from the pile of blocks she’d swept together with her hands. She rolled her eyes. “With the other coloring books.”

 

“But what table?”

 

Kelsey was still picking crumbs out of the carpet.  “The circle one…I think. We were there a second before…this-“she gestured to the wrecked playroom.

 

Biting her lip, Susie nervously asked, “Which one is the circle again?”  She must have been quieter than she thought, whispering when she had meant to speak.  Neither of her friends replied or even looked up from their own cleaning.

 

If the grown-ups had heard her, they made no move to help.  They stuck to the peripheries, mumbling to themselves and each other about the three naughty girls’ behavior as of late, constantly asking themselves “What got into them?”  If they knew the truth, Susie imagined, their skulls would cave in.

 

On her end, the work was going infinitely slower than it should have been. It was difficult to clean with only one hand, but something inside Susie couldn’t bear to let go of Flopsy. “Coloring is at the circle table,” Flopsy told her.  “The one that is shaped like a door.” Oh yeah. She gave her old companion a quick, sneaky smile as she waddled and put the coloring books down on the circle table.

 

Waddling?

 

Frowning a little, Susan felt the swelling diaper gently nudging her legs apart and widened her gait to compensate.  Her faux underwear was still holding the diaper up, but even now she was aware of a certain droopiness. With her free index finger, she poked between her legs, and felt the distinct squish beneath her prodding.  Gone was the signature crisp crinkle of even a mostly dry diaper.

 

She was wet.  Really wet. Not uncomfortable. Not dripping.  But still. Wet. When had that happened? She’d remembered peeing a little bit when she was passing out snacks, but she shouldn’t be this wet, should she?  When had she gotten so squishy and why hadn’t she noticed? “Teacher?”

 

A grown-up came over to Susie, and even though they were about the same height, it felt like she was looking down on her.  “Yes, Susan?”

 

Susie’s voice caught in her throat, and her face glowed to match puffy sleeves of her dress. Needed or not, it was still embarrassing for her to ask to be stripped and wiped just so she could piss herself all over again.

 

Instead of speaking to her deed, Susie pointed between her legs and gave her diaper a quick squish.  The adult’s probing hand copied followed suit and squeezed the front of Susie’s crotch. “You’re wet alright.”  Two foreign fingers slipped past her panties and into the leg hole of Susie’s diaper. “But not too wet. Finish cleaning up the room, and then maybe I’ll change you.”

 

A kind of dread overcame Susie.  The rule! What about the rule! “But I gotta go potty!” Susie almost dropped Flopsy, grasping at the air where the grown-up used to be.  She hadn’t meant to say that, of course. The words had just slipped out. It’s just that, as per the rules they had made up this morning, she shouldn’t be doing anything in a wet diaper except trying to get changed; it was the closest thing to toilet autonomy that was available to her at the moment.  “I gotta go potty…”

 

The daycare worker stopped and turned around.  “Honey, you’re not potty trained, you’re a forever baby.”  The words dripped with equal parts maternal love and condescension.  “Now back to work, and then you can go play.”

 

Susie sulked and started gathering up the crayons off the floor.  Dang things had rolled everywhere. They had all been in one location, but all it took was one tantrum to scatter them to the four corners of the room.

 

Each step across the floor made another squish as the big baby became increasingly aware of her diaper.  The darn thing was like a mosquito bite. She hadn’t noticed it before, but now that she did, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 

Step. Squish. Step. Squish. Step. Step. Squish. Squish.  She’d already tuned out the crinkling sound every time she shifted her weight, but now it felt like it was no crinkle and all sopping wet squish.  How she missed the crinkle! How sad was it that she was starting to look forward to getting her diaper changed?

 

A slight aching in the soles of her feet was starting to take her mind off her diaper.  Were her feet already getting sore? Was it really taking her and her friends that long to clean up the mess they’d made, or had Susie just lost the ability to accurately keep track of time? Considering her bad luck with the coloring and her good luck with the circle table, Susie estimated that her odds were fifty-fifty-fifty.  One thing was for certain, it was a lot easier to make a mess than it was to clean it up.

 

  That last admission left a nasty taste in Susie’s mouth. It was easier to mess things up than to clean them up; that was the story of her life right now.  And yet her most immediate concern was still how wet her diaper was. Maybe Mommy was right. Maybe she was just a baby.

 

“You’re not a baby,” Flopsy told her.  “You’re totally a big girl!”

 

Kelsey came up to her, her hands flecked with the corpses of animal crackers. Bits of stepped on Oreos had somehow made it into her hair.  “Don’t worry about the whole clean diaper rule,” she said. “It’s not something we could’ve really controlled anyways.” She stole a look at Dakota busily trying to fit peg blocks into their proper holes (and having a Devil of a time with it).  “I think it was just a power play by Dakota anyways.”

Her tears finally starting to dry, Susie looked at her two friends- the one in front of her, and the one in the crook of her arm-and smiled.  “Thanks,” she sniffed. A quick drag of her nose across her forearm got most of the green slime dangling from her nose.

 

“Ew.”  Kelsey looked like she wanted to back away, and her torso was a few steps ahead of her legs.

 

Her brain caught up to her nose in that instant.  Wet diaper. Okay. Mucus on the arm. Not good. Wet and sticky stuff was okay, but only if other people couldn’t see it.  She should have known that. She was a big girl. “Sorry.” She grabbed a stray piece of coloring book and swabbed her arm with it.  “Sorry.”

 

“It’s alright.”

 

“Hey!” Dakota called out from across the room.. “So you bit….you b-words all had the same flashback as me, right?”

 

Across the room joints locked and hair stood on the back of their legs. Susie and Kelsey’s mouths slammed shut, but their eyes were screaming at Dakota:  WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS NOW?! WE’RE NOT ALONE. DO YOU WANT TO GET CAUGHT?

 

“Dakota, what are you talking about?” one of the supervising grown-ups called out, giving voice to the others’ eyes.

 

Dakota rocked back and forth on her feet, averting her gaze while keeping her hands behind her back.  “Sorry Miss grown-up ma’am. I’m just playin’ a pretend game to make the work go faster. Is that okay?”

 

“What are you playing?”

 

“I’m pretendin’ that me and Kelsey and Susan are all grown-ups insteada Forbies, and that we’re bein’ made to do this work because of magic that turned us into Forbies insteada cuz we was naughty.”

 

Susie looked over at the grown-ups leaning against the wall.  “But you were naughty, baby.”

 

“I know.  I’m just pretendin’ so I don’t cry so much and can get the work done.”

 

“As long as you finish cleaning up.”

 

“Yes ma’am.”  Dakota’s eyes twinkled back at Susie: OH HELL YEAH!

 

With a clicker clack the leftover crayons tumbled from Susie’s grasp.  Of course they could talk openly about this! Everyone thought they were babies! Who cared about what babies talked to each other about?

 

Picking up the crayons, Susie waddled over to Dakota.  “What happened to you? You were so nice.”

 

Haphazardly, Dakota threw more shapes in a circle shaped bucket.  “I grew up.”

 

From the crook of Susie’s arm, Flopsy snickered, “You sure about that?”  Bested by a stuffed animal, Dakota could only frown in confusion as Susie snickered at her bunny’s comeback, and waddled off to get more crayons.

 

Kelsey tilted a bookshelf up off the floor.  “This is like the weirdest high school reunion ever.”

 

“I don’t know,” Dakota mused.  “Seems pretty standard to me. A bunch of people hanging out, catching up, and realizing they haven’t accomplished much.”

 

Susie was almost done cleaning up all the crayons.  “Yeah, but instead of being like ‘So you don’t have a job, either?’,” she added, “It’s more like ‘So you don’t go potty no more, either, huh?”  All of them had a good, bitter laugh at that. Susie’s voice rang out the loudest, and before too long, she realized that her friends were staring at her, and they looked a little uncomfortable.  Were they wet, too?

 

“Are you feeling alright?” Kelsey asked.

 

Susie shrugged.  “I mean. Not really. This whole thing sucks.  But at least we know why it sucks.”

 

Kelsey finally noticed the crumbs in her hair and brushed them out over a wastebasket. “We’ve got a diagnosis.  What’s the prescription?”

 

They continued cleaning up.  “Make another wish?” Susie offered.

 

Dakota rolled her eyes, and pointed suggestively to the padded bulge covered by her onesie.  “Yeah, and meanwhile have another twenty years of this.”

 

“Better late than never…?”  Flopsy offered. No one thought it was particularly funny.

Feeling an urge to bail her stuffie out, Susie scrambled to keep things on track.  “Maybe we can get potty trained again?” More staring. “Hear me out. We’re babies, yeah?”

 

“Yeeeeeah….” Dakota allowed.  Her eyes narrowed, as if wondering where Susie was going with this.

 

Wet diaper squishing between her legs, Susie took a deep breath.  Concentrate. Concentrate. “If we can’t change back, maybe we can work around the rules of this world.”

 

“What are you getting at?”

 

Susie held her hand out to ward off any stinging rebuke from Dakota. “Hear me out. There are genius babies, right?  Like cases of super smart babies that can go to college…?”

 

“Not quite,” Kelsey said. “But I think I see what you’re getting at…”

Finally!  Someone was getting her.  “Maybe we stop trying to be grown-up?  I mean we’ll still BE grown-ups…but since we can’t convince anybody…maybe we settle for being really smart Forbies?”

 

“One problem with that,” Kelsey said. “I don’t think we’re smart anymore.”  A sad frown spread over her face, like it was painful just to make that admission out loud.

“WE ARE TOO SMART!” Flopsy protested.

 

“Yeah!”  Susie agreed.

 

Dakota was turning her pacifier back over in her hands again; an addict with a pipe. “Why are you so excited to admit that we’re turning into idiots?”

 

“We’re not losing stuff!”

 

Lips curled in disgust, Dakota retorted. “Really?  I’m pretty sure we had an argument over colors and we were all wrong.  F-ing colors! We’re losing more than our potty training. We’re losing Kindergarten shhhh---shtuff.  So dumb!”

 

From behind her glasses, Susie blinked in surprise.  “But we didn’t wish to be dumb. Just babies.”

 

A foot stomp on the floor, punctuated Dakota’s impending tantrum.  “What’s the difference?! Dumb and babies are practically the same thing!” Susies lip started to tremble.  She wasn’t dumb! She was smart; super smart! She’d figure this whole thing out and they’d be back to normal in no time.

 

But why was Dakota being so mean?  She used to be so nice. Then they all went away and started to grow up and they forgot all about each other and now everything was wrong. She had her best friends back with her, but now they were all miserable.  An innocent wish had finally come true, and now it was the opposite of a wish.

 

Kelsey stepped between the two taller girls.  “I think this um…game…is getting a little too intense, guys.  Don’t you think?” She looked at Susie. “Are you okay, Susan?”

 

“Yeah,” Flopsy echoed from the crook of Susie’s arm. “Are you okay?”

 

“Of course I’m okay,” Susie scoffed.  “Why is everybody asking me that right now?”

 

“It’s okay if you’re kinda frazzled,” Kelsey said.  She put a hand on Susie’s shoulder. “I think I’d be the same in your shoes.”  Susie stepped back, aghast.

 

She didn’t have time to ask what Kelsey meant by that.  Dakota filled in the blanks for her. “Ip wush yer iyea.”  She’d gone back to the pacifier, but every garbled word was clear enough.  “Vaf how I ‘memur ip.” In an instant, Flopsy was clutched to Susie’s chest, a shield against the terrible accusations being hurled towards her.

 

“It was not!” Susie insisted.

 

“Wuf too,”

 

“Was not”

 

“Wuf too!”

 

“WAS N-“

 

“Okay girls!”, one of the grown-ups said.  “I think you’ve had enough, punishment. Go out and play.”

 

The three were ripped from their sphere of self-involvement.  It was Kelsey who spoke up. “But we’re not done, yet.”

 

“You’ve done enough.  Go play.” Another grown-up was wheeling out a vacuum cleaner as the first bent over and picked up a crayon that Susie had missed.  “We’ve gotta get ready for lunch,” they’d said to each other.

 

Kelsey shuddered…or peed a little…Susie couldn’t tell…and said, “They’ve given up on us.  We can’t even clean up a mess properly.”

 

“Vey fink weah bay-bees.”

 

“Babies don’t clean up messes,” Flopsy added.

 

“At least there’s one good thing about bein’ a forever baby,” Susie admitted.

Shaking her head, Kelsey huffed, “Let’s just talk about this outside, okay?”  Wordlessly, they agreed and waddle-trudged outside.

 

Before she crossed the threshold out into the playground, the grown-up that Susie had begged to change her caught her attention.  “You did a good job cleaning up, Susan.” Susie looked at the still half-done job. Bits of what were now confetti still littered the ground and there were toys that were clearly on the wrong shelf.  Obvious lie is obvious. “Do you want me to change you now?”

 

Her friends were already a few steps ahead of her onto the playground, making a bee-line for the safety of the old rusty slide and not looking back.  She shook her head. “No, I’m okay. Gotta catch up.”

 

A firm hand on her shoulder stopped her from taking another step.  “Just a second, sweetie.” Great; another grown-up who was asking a question where the only answer was ‘yes’; just like Mommy.  Susie felt two fingers brush against the small of her back as the back of her diaper was pulled back and looked inside. “Okay. Not poopy.  You’re good for a little while yet.” Susie startled a bit and squeezed Flopsy as the elastic on her faux panties snapped the diaper back in place.  That was going to take some getting used to.

 

Kelsey and Dakota were waiting for her on the playground a few seconds later.  “I thought you were getting cleaned up?” Kelsey half-asked as Susie waddled up into earshot.

 

The little girl shrugged.  “I passed. I wasn’t poopy or nothin’.”  The pacifier dropped back out of Dakota’s mouth, dangling from the ribbon on her onesie once more.  Kelsey was equally slack jawed. “What?” Susie asked. “I thought we said that clean diaper rule was dumb.”

 

“Yeah,” Dakota said. “When the adult won’t LET you get changed!”

 

“It’s not like I’m poopy.”  The other girls looked away, clearly embarrassed.  Too late, Susie realized what she’d said might have come across as hurtful.  “Oh no,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just…I just…”

 

An accusatory finger cut Susie off. “You’re losing it, girl!  Do you wanna turn into...into...that?!”

 

Susie followed the line of Dakota’s digit.  It wasn’t pointing to her after all. Instead, just over her left shoulder, was Alice.  The dark haired girl was toddling around the playground, heading from the sandbox to a set of nautical themed spring riders, all sized for full grown adults, of course.  There was a shark, a whale, a dolphin, and of course, a seahorse. Back over at the sandbox, a forever baby girl was whimpering and scratching at her crotch; sand pouring out of the leg holes of her diaper.  Susie didn’t know Alice from her past life, but she suspected this behavior was typical.

 

 Susie shrugged.  “What’s your point? You’re not much better.”   

 

“Wanna bet?”

 

Just then, the annoying Forbie stopped in her tracks and began rubbing her tummy a bit as she widened her stance.  The girl looked thoughtful for a second, like she was on the verge of a life altering revelation. Faintly, Susie wondered if maybe there were more than just the three of them that really knew how screwed up the world now was.  Alice disabused her of that notion a second later when she popped her thumb into her mouth. Knees slightly bent, her free hand on her left knee; Alice leaned forward and stuck her backside out. In another lifetime, Susie might have assumed that Alice was doing some kind of impromptu dance move; like a slow motion twerk, only with less rhythm and far less sex appeal.  The dopey grin on the girl’s face and the expanding backside of her pants indicated otherwise.

 

As if reading her thoughts, Flopsy said, “You don’t think you’re going to end up like THAT, do you?”

 

A new round of revulsion gnawed at the base of Susie’s skull, as she stared at Alice.  Her load deposited firmly in the back seat of her disposable panties, Alice calmly stood up and finished her journey towards the spring riders.  Easily, and without hesitation, she threw her leg over the shark, and sat down on it, not even flinching as the lump in her diaper was spread and smeared into obfuscation.  “God, I hope not,” Susie whispered.

 

“Yeah,” Dakota called out, regaining Susie’s attention.  “My point exactly. I might be a b-word, but everything else about Alice...that’s you.”

 

“You’re the one who was suckin’ on her binkie.”

 

Kelsey smirked, despite herself.  “She’s got you there.”

 

“You can barely color, b-word!  You don’t even know what colors are!” Dakota snarled.  For all they’d learned, they were back to bickering at each other.  Some friends they were turning out to be.

 

The shorter girl flexed her fingers like a cat testing her claws.  “It’s like I’ve been TRYING to say. We’re losing stuff! Whatever magic or whatever it was from that star is doing this to us!”

 

Again, their gaze came back to Susie.  “It’s not my fault!” Susie objected. “It’s all of our fault.  If you weren’t a part of this, we wouldn’t be talking to each other.  It’d just be me and Flopsy, and you too would be dumb happy forever babies. So can we please try to be grown-up about this?”

 

“Would you listen to yourself?!” Dakota screamed.  “Grown-up? I haven’t heard you say the word ‘adult’ lately.”

 

“I can say…’adult’.”  It didn’t sound right though.  It was like speaking a foreign language, all of the syllables were there but something in the pronunciation or tone was off.  All the components without the understanding.

 

“I thought something was wrong,” Kelsey said.  “I think we’re regressing, and it’s only gotten worse since we’ve remembered what happened.  We’re losing parts of ourselves. We’re catching up to the rest of the world, including calling the adults ‘grown-ups’.”

Dakota looked down at Kelsey condescendingly.  “Yeah, cuz talking about ‘the adults’ like we’re not is so much better.”

 

Kelsey looked to Dakota. “You haven’t been cursing as much since snack time.”

 

“What are you talking about you little c-word?”  The smug look from Kelsey was enough to send her fumbling for her pacifier again.

 

“Heh,” Kelsey giggled, “thought so. I bet you can’t even say va…vaj…” she stumbled.

 

“Hoo-hoo?  Oh crud.”

 

“They ARE getting littler,” Flopsy noticed.  “They’re too busy getting angry with you to notice it in themselves.”

 

“Yeah,” Susan replied, “but to be fair, how would you know if you were getting dumber and littler?”

 

“You wouldn’t,” Flopsy said.

 

“I guess not.”

 

“Uh…Susan?” Kelsey asked.  “Who are you talking to?”

 

“I’m talking to…” Susie stopped.  “Oh….”

 

She dropped the rabbit to the ground.

 

(Kelsey)

 

Another spoonful of yogurt came tilting towards Kelsey’s mouth.  For the sixth or seventh time, she’d stopped counting, she opened wide and accepted the goopy stuff.  There might be one more spoonful of yogurt left until she’d have to wait for the cinnamon applesauce. To her left and right respectively, were Susan and Dakota, each of them taking turns being spoon fed by daycare workers.

 

There were probably close to a dozen forever babies in the kitchen area, all having their turn being spoon fed in unnecessary highchairs.  At the foot of each humongous plastic and steel restraint device, little bits of spilled goop littered the ground: Spaghetti-O’s. Apple Sauce.  Macaroni. Pureed mush. Anything and everything that could be scooped up and spoon fed into a human mouth.

 

 What must have once been a pristine shiny white tile floor, was now dulled and stained with the multitude of a thousand little spills over the course of the last two decades.  This stood out to Kelsey, but likely no one else; certainly not the Forbies, or their caregivers. The strange shift in reality brought on by their decades old child wish bearing fruit was sudden only to the three girls who had made it.  To everyone else, this was how things had always been, a slow creep and crawl of perpetual infancy.

 

And though this was yet another degrading and humiliating limitation placed on her adulthood; and a bizarre distortion of her proclivities, (former proclivities, she promised herself; she wouldn’t so much as look at a cartoon if she got out of this mess) to everyone else, it was just lunch.

 

Outside the kitchen where forever babies were being fed in highchairs, other twenty-something babies sat on adult laps and nursed from bottles, greedily glugging down formula as their lips pulled on rubber nipples.  A few were being led over to cubbies and taking out blankets for an after-meal nap.

 

“I don’t get it,” Kelsey said while the adult went to spoon some kind of glop into Dakota’s waiting mouth. “None of this makes sense.”

 

Susan hungrily eyed the half-empty jar of strained peas in front of her, waiting for the daycare worker to circle back to her.  “It’s magic. It doesn’t hafta make sense.”

“Not what I mean,” Kelsey said.  “The baby parts don’t make any sense to me.”

A bit of orange mush- likely sweet potato- squirted out of Dakota’s mouth and onto her waiting bib. “Ha!  Really? You’re the second biggest baby here.”

 

“Dakota…” Susan shot the blonde so-and-so a warning look.  “It’s not too late for us ta leave you alone.” Then just as quickly, the girl opened her mouth wide, like a hatchling, so that semi-solid food could be spooned into her mouth.  Kelsey shrunk down in her seat out of embarrassment for her (till now forgotten) friend. Clearly, Dakota’s crack about “second biggest baby” had gone over Susan’s head…or maybe it hadn’t.  It was hard to tell.

 

Kelsey was losing things; they all were. Rationally, she knew this, even if she couldn’t put her finger on what was being lost; but she was gaining other things as well.  Specifically, old, happy memories from long ago were resurfacing with each spoonful of baby food forced into her.

 

Little Susie had always been the leader of their little toddler clique back in the daycare days.  She wasn’t necessarily the queen-bee type whom the other girls hung on her every word, but she had typically been the one to take the first step in anything.

 

Vaguely, she recalled a half-remembered incident a few weeks after that fateful wish.  Susie had been the first to go into Pull-Ups, too. She’d started potty training before their little group broke up.

 

Even now that they were all together, flashes of good old Susie were showing in Susan’s personality.  She’d been the one to recognize that the three of them had this awareness of their current plight in common and had brought them back together; she’d kept the peace between the three of them; she’d led the room trashing, and now she was leading the charge backwards into perpetual infancy.

 

That shouldn’t be particularly surprising, though, Kelsey thought as a spoonful of cinnamon applesauce, the flavors dancing on her tongue, made its way to the back of her throat.  People changed as they grew up, but the years added to the definition of a person, not took away from them. So maybe Susan had always been Susie. Maybe Susan at twenty-two wasn’t that different from Susie at two…not where it really mattered.

She swallowed.  “The problem isn’t that we’re being treated like babies, it’s that we’re being treated like different kinds of babies, all at once.”

Dakota accepted another spoonful of mush and swallowed. “That sounds racist.”

“Dakota….”

 

The ex-psych major piped in so she could make her point.  “The levels of development are all over the place. We were two when this wish happened.  Two-year-olds don’t need to be spoon fed mush.”

 

“Babies do,” Susie offered.  “We wished to be babies, not two-year-olds.”

 

“Are you three still playing that silly grown-up game?”  The adult feeding them asked.

 

Dakota pouted out her lip and made big puppy dog eyes.  “Yes ma’am. We were just having oh so much fun, we didn’t want to stop.  It’s fun pretendin’ to be grown-ups in diapers.”

 

Their jailer chuckled.  “Okay okay. Just make sure you grown-ups in diapers all go down for your naps after lunch, okay?”

 

The ex-gold digger flashed a smile that would have made Shirley temple gag at the cuteness.  “Okie dokie.” Dakota took another spoonful and then flashed a knowing wink and a devious grin at the others.

 

The thing of it was, it wasn’t that odd that they were talking so openly, Kelsey noticed.  Across the kitchen a couple of boys in onesies were discussing how they were dinosaur spacemen between gobs of mashed potatoes.  They were talking with the same gravity that Kelsey and her friends were discussing being trapped as they were. Alice walked by the kitchen, nap blanket in tow, yammering on about cartoons to an attentive adult who wasn’t listening as much as she was saying “Mmmhmm,” every time Alice paused for breath.  

 

That’s how this new reality was: Everyone thought of them as babies. Babies said silly stuff.  Ergo, their captors wouldn’t give much credence or import to anything that the three (hopefully not) forever babies said to each other.  Dakota had been the one to pick up on that and use it to their advantage. She might be a manipulative, emotionally stunted witch, but her natural aptitudes were certainly coming in handy.

 

The thought about Dakota; how she’d wanted to claw her eyes out when they’d first met; made Kelsey sad.  What the heck had happened to her over the last twenty years? The first time the three of them were all in daycare, she was easily the nicest girl you’d ever met: Thoughtful, sweet, empathetic, compassionate.  As close as the adult Susan was to her child-self, Dakota was miles away from who she used to be. She was angry, snarky, a complete b-word and c-word and all the nasty words rolled up into one.

 

Still…whenever the girls had wanted something from their caregivers, they had always nominated sweet little Dakota to be their spokeswoman.  Dakota always had a way with people. Some things never changed.

 

A series of muffled farts caused Kelsey to whip her head around the other direction.  Susan was leaning forward in her highchair, her bum lifted ever so slightly. The girl’s face was warped silly putty; her eyes scrunched shut while her cheeks puffed out; her lips buzzed like an open balloon as far too similar noises came out the back of her.  Her hands gripped the light beige tray of her highchair.

 

“What’s the matter Susan?” The daycare worker asked.

 

The unofficial leader of their little group shuddered noticeably and her lips curled back.  “Makin’...poopy.” The farting sounds stopped, and Susan’s face slackened a bit, but her behind remained lifted in the air; her eyes still closed.

 

“Fight it,” Kelsey heard herself whispering. “Fight it.”  But the fight was over. As quickly as it began, it ended.  Kelsey watched as the back of Susan’s panties puffed out a bit as the grunting stopped.  Then the other girl opened her eyes, sighed audibly, and then plopped her butt back down into the seat of her oversized highchair. Breathlessly she mouthed a single word.

 

“Done.”

 

“Did you just make some room in your tummy?” The adult cooed at Susie.  “Did you?” Susie nodded sheepishly, not like a mortified young woman who had just publicly soiled herself, but like a baby girl who was just soaking in all the extra attention.  She was even smiling, Kelsey noticed. Then, without even being prompted, Susie opened her mouth and hungrily accepted yet another spoonful of baby food.

 

Just the thought of still having an appetite after messing herself threatened to destroy what remained of Kelsey’s appetite.  How could Susie so easily debase herself and still eat? How could she smile? More importantly, was that going to happen to Kelsey?  How far off was she from doing her business in her pants and then going back to playtime as if it didn’t happen. How much longer before she was not only proudly announcing it, but also talking about it like it was nothing?  How much more time did she have before she ended up like Susie?

 

The yogurt in Kelsey’s stomach felt like it soured instantly, and the girl who would be a psychologist felt nauseous.  A sour burp stuck in her throat, threatening to be the first wave of projectile vomit…though in this case it might just be written off as spit-up.  

 

“Susan…Susie…”

 

“What’s going on?” Dakota asked.  The blonde girl was fidgeting in her seat, straining to see what was going on, with Kelsey acting as a barrier.

“Susan…Susie just…”  Kelsey’s words were cut off as she had to twist and turn her head to avoid the next spoonful coming for her mouth; applesauce smearing on her cheek.  She had lost her appetite.

 

Susie interrupted.  “You’re overthinking it. Ya got too much smartness in ya.”  Baffled, Kelsey stopped to stare just long enough for a heaping spoonful of mashed apples and cinnamon to be whirled around and shoved into her mouth.

 

Forced to breathe through her nose as she swallowed, Kelsey inhaled through her nose, picking up the smell of the hot mess now resting in the back of her oldest friend’s diaper.  Involuntarily, Kelsey’s eyes drifted downward towards Susie’s bottom. How was she not even squirming? The gunk felt like a rock sliding down her throat. “Whaddya mean?”

For an instant, the pure thoughtful adult clarity that had been uniquely Susan’s flashed behind her thick glasses.  “We made that wish when we was babies, not grownups. We weren’t thinkin’ about newborns an’ crawlers and toddlers. So it all got mixed up.” Susan started ticking items off on her fingers.  “Babies drink from ba-bas, suck on pacis, eat in highchairs, sleep in cribs, and wear diapees.” She dipped those same fingers into the jar of baby food on her tray and started to greedily lick and suck on her digits.  

 

Welcome back Susie.

 

“So we’re stuck in a two year old’s version of babyhood.” Dakota said while the teacher circled back around to Susie. “Makes sense to me. As much sense as anything else.” There was a brief pause as Kelsey’s diaper became a little warmer and a little bulkier.  Thankfully no one seemed to notice. “Explains why I haven’t seen any breastfeeding,” Dakota went on, oblivious. “I didn’t know about that till my little sister was born.” Then she sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

 

A green mush stained hand shot up in the air.  “I poopied,” Susie volunteered. Her hand was immediately snatched as a caretaker started wiping the flecks of strained pea off her palm with a moist towelette.

 

“Steve walks warily down the street with the brim pulled way down low.” Dakota intoned.

 

Unphased by the poop in her pants, the stranger wordlessly wiping down her hands and face, or the blonde girl’s sarcastic remarks, Susie looked Kelsey straight in the eye.  “How come you’re still so smart?”

 

“Because she’s not a total baby…yet.”

 

The former psych major ignored the ex-gold digger’s comment.  “I’m not that smart. I don’t even know colors anymore.”

 

“But you know diff’rent…diff’rent…baby stuff. I wouldn’ta thought of that.”

 

“See previous comment,” Dakota chimed in.  Susie either ignored Dakota or didn’t get the insult as she was handed a bottle of something white and milky.  She held it with both hands and tilted her head back, chugging the stuff down. The smell from her diaper was getting worse, but she didn’t seem to mind.

 

Next it was Kelsey’s turn to have her face and hands wiped, whether she needed it or not.  She squeaked as two fingers slid under the tray and into her diaper. “You’re due for a change before naptime, too,” the adult said. “But first have your bottle.”  Kelsey gingerly sucked on the rubber nipple, afraid- perhaps irrationally so- that whatever was inside the bottle might speed along her backward progress.

 

“She’s got a point, though,” Dakota said, completely unfazed when it was her turn to be scrubbed down in her plastic prison chair. “You don’t know colors, but you know a lot of stuff about babies.”

 

“Maybe I was the smar…” Kelsey saw the challenge in Dakota’s eyes and thought better for the sake of diplomacy.  “Maybe I learned more stuff and it’s taking longer to leak out.”

 

Dakota must have been dizzy from how much she was rolling her eyes, Kelsey thought.  “Or maybe we’re just keeping the stuff that was…I dunno…a big part of us from back in the day.”

 

“I didn’t want to be a psycho-doctor back then.”  Kelsey bit her tongue. Psycho-doctor? That wasn’t right, was it?  It couldn’t be. It didn’t sound grown-up enough.

 

The last bottle was handed out, and Dakota took a swig from it like it was full of beer instead of formula.  “But you were always kind of a know-it-all. And you always had a thing about kid and grown-up stuff.” The blonde so-and-so set down her bottle. “I remember you bawling your eyes out when Susie got into Pull-Ups, first.” She bawled up her fists and began rubbing her eyes in a mock pantomime of crying.  “You kept saying ‘It’s over, it’s oooover’. We’re gettin’ tooooo biiiiig.” She put her hands down and took another swig. “No judgement, but as ‘smart’ as you are, you’ve always had issues. Knowing what I know now, I’m surprised you weren’t the first.”

 

The hiss of a rubber nipple gasping from air as it’s owner stopped sucking on it. “First what?”

 

“Nothin’ Susie. You just keep on drinking, sweetie.”

 

Another sour burp caught in Kelsey’s throat.  “I am too smart. I was going to be a psycho-doctor one day.”

 

Dakota kept twiddling with her pacifier, nervously, as she all but inhaled the milky stuff in front of her.  “How many doctor Seuss books are there?”

 

The curls in Kelsey’s head bobbled with excitement.  “Forty-five,” she said, confidently. “More if you count the books that were published after his death or under a different name.”  She sucked on the bottle confidently and took a breath. “ And I can tell you about them all.”

 

“Can you count them?”  It was Susie who asked this, her face curious and awestruck instead of challenging.  “Can you count that tall?”

 

“Um…” Kelsey thought out loud.  “One…? Two…? Kay…? Eeee…? Elll…?”

 

Once again, the adult who’d been feeding them burst into the conversation.  “Honey, those last few were letters, not numbers. But I think you were starting to spell your name.”  A bit of milk dribbled out of the smallest girl’s mouth as her teacher went to pinch her cheek just as she was having another sip from her bottle.  “Such a clever baby.”

 

Yet again, another revolting bubble made itself known.  There was no more room in the back of her throat, so this one was lodged firmly and uncomfortably in her stomach.

 

“Hey poopy pants,” Dakota called out. “What’s two plus two?”

 

Susie finished her bottle and dropped it off the side of her tray.  “Um…two plus two is…two two? Like the pretty frills ballerina’s wear?”  Then, as a kind of spoken punctuation, Susie let out a belch that rattled up from the back of her throat.  Wordlessly, their caretaker bent over and picked up the bottle, laughing under her breath.

 

“Now what do you call two eggs on toast?”

 

“Adam and Eve on a raft,” Susie said without hesitation.  “Why?”

 

Dakota put her bottle down and quietly burped into her hand.  “I think my point is proven.” The brat was right. Kelsey hated to admit it, but she was right.  “What I can’t figure out is why isn’t my little sister here with us.”

 

Their caregiver intervened.  “Your little sister? You mean Virginia?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“That’s because she was too young…” the daycare lady paused. “She wasn’t the right age.  Only people in a certain age group are forever babies.” Then cheerily she added. “Everybody else; older or younger; has to grow up.”

 

“You mean gets to grow up,” Kelsey sulked.  She clutched her tummy, feeling more pain rise up in her.  Something wasn’t agreeing with her, and it wasn’t just the rank smell coming from Susie’s padded bottom.

 

“I didn’t know you had a little sister,” Susie said, leaning far over in her chair so she could look at Dakota.  It did not help the stench.

 

“She wasn’t born ‘til after we split up.” Dakota replied.  Susie leaned back again, undoubtedly sending the mess everywhere, likely even towards her front.  The thought made Kelsey want to wretch a little bit.

 

The tray slid out from in front of Kelsey.  “I know that look,” the teacher said. A worn white towel was draped carefully over one of the woman’s shoulders.  “Somebody needs burpies.” At the word ‘burpies’, as if on autopilot, Kelsey’s body lurched forward into the arms of the grown-up…the adult…teacher…whatever. Her legs wrapped around the woman’s waist as an open hand started pounding her back.

 

“BLUUUURP!”

 

“Good girl!”

 

A bit of pressure left her gut.  There was still more, however.

“UUUUUURH”

 

“Good girl!”  Out of a sense of misguided courtesy, or maybe it was just habit, Kelsey found herself turned around as the woman burping her pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees.  Now she could look both of her friends in the eye as she belched. Wonderful. Her weight was shifted forward briefly, and she felt a hand pat her backside. “Good thing you’re wearing those plastic panties today, Kelsey.  Otherwise you’d have leaked by now.” Kelsey’s face was pink enough to contrast nicely with the light blue Cinderella diaper cover she’d been dressed in this morning.

 

The other two didn’t remark on this.  Dakota looked like she was going to say something, but then shifted around in her seat and looked distinctly uncomfortable.  None of them were dry, it appeared. Kelsey did her best to escape her own humiliation by burying her head in the bigger woman’s shoulder.

 

“UUUUUURP!”

 

“Good girl! Just a couple more.”

 

The obviously more regressed of the three picked up the conversation, not at all disturbed by Kelsey’s current plight.  “That’s why your sister’s not a Forbie like the rest of uuuu….” Susie stopped and a flash of Susan came back. “Like them. Wish didn’t work on them cuz they didn’t exist yet.”

 

“Then how come the oldest babies here are only a little bit older than us?” Dakota demanded to know.

 

Kelsey couldn’t help herself.  “We were two. Did we really think anybody old enough to be in kindergarten as being ‘like us’?”  She followed with a large “ERRRRRRRP!”

 

“Good girl!” The world whirled around for a second, and Kelsey was plopped back into her highchair, a sodden squish punctuating the act as the tray was clicked back into place.  “You wait here, while I get everyone ready for naps.” The handful of daycare workers in the kitchen turned their backs on the three as they started to escort and carry other Forbies out of the kitchen.

 

Finally, they were alone.

 

The petit little girl rested her hands in her chin.  “We’re stuck here because of a two-year-old’s wish.”

 

“Our two-year-old’s wish,” Susie corrected.  She wriggled around in her seat a little bit, a hint of a smile creeping to her lips. “Is anybody else starting to think this is kinda comfy?”

 

“No.”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh…me neither.  Just checkin’.”

 

A tired, defeated huff puffed itself out of Kelsey’s throat. “I never would’ve thought magic was real.”

 

“We did, though,” Susie said.  “Back then.”

 

 “I sure as heck believe it now,” Dakota said, though it was anything but triumphant.  “Too bad we can’t wish again. I don’t want to spend another twenty years like this.”

 

Poor innocent Susie cocked her head to the side.  “Why don’t we just wish on somethin’ else?”

 

Dakota scoffed.  “Oh yeah? Like what?  What else could we possibly wish on? You wish on stars.  Everybody knows that. Even two-year-olds know that. What; you wanna wish on a tree or something?”

 

Wish on something else?  The gears started turning in Kelsey’s head.  Why not? Wishing trees might not be a thing…but what about…what about…? “THAT’S IT!” Kelsey shook with joy in her highchair.  “I know how to fix this! I know where we can make a wish!”

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(Dakota)

 

It was like a train wreck, or a car crash, or a terrible circus accident involving hungry lions and fat clowns. Point being: Dakota just couldn’t make herself look away.  She and Kelsey sat on the floor, not ten feet away from the adult sized changing table, their legs forced apart by the sodden bulge in their diapers. On the changing table was Susie, and Dakota couldn’t take her eyes off the girl.  It was like watching a snuff film, but only the adult part of the girl was dying.

 

She watched with morbid fascination as the polka-dot panties were shimmied off of Susie’s hips and off her legs, revealing her swollen, oversaturated diaper; shades of yellow and brown overpowering the once pristine white outer layer.  The mean girl turned brat couldn’t help but steal a glance between her own legs? Was her own diaper that ruined? More worrisome, when had she wet herself? She could have sworn that she’d been clean when the adult had strapped her into the highchair, yet the squish from squelching squish when she’d been set down on the floor was no mistake.

 

Looking back up to the changing table, Dakota saw Susie holding that dumb stuffed rabbit over her head, tilting it back and forth like she were making it fly; giggling too. Meanwhile, a complete stranger tended to the space between her legs.

 

The sound of ripping tapes caused Dakota to flinch.  Kelsey, little bird that she was, jerked in surprise too.

 

Then the diaper was pulled forward, and Dakota spit out her paci for fear she might vomit on it.  From front to back and even a bit on the sides, Susie was coated in her own mess. Even the daycare worker-who from her perspective had to have had plenty of years dealing with things like this-let out a guttural “Oof” and fanned her hand in front of her own face.

 

Susie just giggled and played with her bunny.

 

It was mesmerizing in a way: Susie by her dumb stuffie; the other two by the sight of her having poop wiped off her vagina.

 

Averting her gaze, Dakota’s eyes darted down past her nose and towards her mouth. How did her paci get back in there? With great effort, she took the pacifier out of her mouth for what felt like the millionth time.  “This is so weird.”

 

“I know, right?” Kelsey whispered back. “And we’re next. On the changing table, I mean.”

 

Dakota gave a half-playful half-mocking nudge to her (until recently) rival.  “Not that,” she said. “I mean the stuff that’s going on in my head. I didn’t even know you this morning, and now I’ve got all these memories flooding into my head from before.  Further back than most people ‘member.” She stared as the rest of the poop was scraped from Susie’s most delicate parts, and then the daycare employee went to work closer to the point of origin.  “It’s not normal.”

 

“Not used to empathy?” Kelsey asked.

 

Yes.  But that’s not what Dakota had been referring to.  “It’s memories…and feelings. Like, we were strangers this morning.  We’d forgotten each other. And that’s normal, right?” She didn’t wait for an answer.  “And even if we found out we used to be friends; that was twenty years ago. We should be like…I dunno…meeting each other for the first time all over again. But it’s all fresh in my head like it all happened yesterday all of a sudden. It feels like we’ve always been best friends; like our whole friggin’ grown-up lives never happened.”

 

“More like they happened…” Kelsey paused.  Dakota sincerely hoped it wasn’t because she was doing something in her pants.  “..but all those years happened here instead.”

“Exactly!” Dakota almost screamed. Dumb little bird wasn’t so dumb after all.  “So, it’s like I look up there,” she gestured to the changing table where an absolutely vile diaper was being rolled up from beneath Susie and thrown into a nearby pail with an audible thump; “and I’m seeing two people.  One of them is my best friend and this is perfectly normal and right. The other is my best friend and she shouldn’t have to go through this kind of crazy.” A hint of a sob threatened Dakota’s composure. “A-a-and I don’t want her to be my friend. I don’t want YOU to be my friend…no offense…”

 

“None taken.”

 

“It was just so much easier when I was surrounded by people I didn’t care about.  I could write them off as stupid, or crazy, or whatever. And now I’m remembering planting stuff in a garden with you…and feeding ducks at a park with her…and naptimes and sleepovers…”

 

“How old were we?”

 

“That’s the thing.  It’s getting harder for me to tell.” Dakota sniffed, and started twirling her pigtails around. Better to keep her hands busy.  “As soon as Susie told us about the wish, it’s like a switch got flipped on my head and stuff is getting edited while I’m not looking.  When I think back to the wish we made I keep seeing us like we are now, not like we were then.”

 

Kelsey looked distinctly disturbed.  “Yeah…me too.” She moved to give Dakota a hug.  Dakota released one of her pigtails and held up a hand to stop her. They both turned and watched as a fresh diaper was unfolded and slid under their (almost forgotten) friend. A cloud of baby powder soon covered her bum and genitals.  If Susie was bothered by any of it, she didn’t signal anything.

 

“So if we’re gonna get out of this, we gotta…”

 

“I know, I know,” Dakota cut Kelsey off. “We gotta wish on something else.  You think this wishing fountain at the college will really work?”

 

The front of the diaper was pulled up between Susie’s legs and taped snugly around her hips.  Susie was only now making things difficult by kicking at the air playfully while the daycare worker tried to work the polka-dot baby panties back over her legs.

 

“It’s gotta work,” Kelsey insisted. “It’s how magic works.  You believe hard enough, and it happens.”

 

THAT rang a few bells. “How do you figure?”

 

Kelsey shrugged nonchalantly.  “It’s how it happened the first time.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Also, I read it in a book.”

 

Despite herself, Dakota arched an eyebrow.  “Yeah? Me too.”

 

“Oh? Weird. Huh?”

 

“Not compared to this.”

A loud rustling crinkle announced Susie’s presence. Even though her diaper had been changed and was now considerably less bulky due to lack of use, Susie still had the same ungraceful waddle of a one year old still figuring out the finer points of locomotion. With surprising speed and no control, Susie plopped down on her padded rump.  It was less of a controlled sit and more of a lucky fall cushioned by the diaper. “Hi guys, whatcha talkin’ ‘bout?”

 

Neither Dakota, nor Kelsey had time to answer before a pair of hands reached down and picked Kelsey up off the ground. Dakota saw Kelsey tremble.  “I guess I’m next,” Kelsey whimpered as she was taken.

 

Naturally, Susie was oblivious to her companions’ discomfort.  Whatever cosmic drug had entered their system, Susie was tripping balls on it.  By comparison, Dakota and Kelsey were only getting a mild buzz; just enough so that they could function.  “Hi Dakota.”

 

Dakota slumped, her eyelids going to half mast to hide her contempt. “Hey Susie.”

The new Forbie rolled over onto her back.  “I think I like gettin’ my diapee changed, now.”

 

“You don’t say…”

 

“You get to smell nice and clean,” Susie went on. “And the powder feels really good. And the crinkle sounds nice.  And it just mooooves different than a wet diapee.” As she was counting off the merits of her new underwear, Susie kicked her legs in the air and started playing with her toes; giving each one a tiny pinch before moving onto the next one.  Was she playing “this little piggy” with herself? Ugh. “And they’re kinda like undies but not. Like they can get covered up, but it’s okay if everybody sees ‘em. They’re cute too.”

 

Dakota inhaled deeply, the air going into her nostrils carried a deep sweet scent of fresh baby powder.  It really did smell nice. Better than the faint odor of pee-pee that surrounded the ex-gold digger. Soon though, Dakota would get to smell pretty, like Susie.  Dakota liked smelling pretty. That thought was a mistake, Dakota realized. “Stop it,” she said out loud. “Just stop.”

 

The forever baby that used to be her friend, rolled to her side, her legs plopping to the ground.  She propped up her head on one hand and looked Dakota in the eye; her legs still splayed, unable to come completely together due to the large bulk between them.  

 

“Whyyyyyyyyy?”

 

“You’re not supposed to be this way,” Dakota reminded her.  “You’re supposed to be…I dunno…I’m guessing a boring but responsible grown-up.”  Dakota wasn’t sure. Everything in the memory department was starting to align and tell her that yes, Susie was more or less acting the way she’d always acted, but common sense screamed otherwise.  Just earlier this morning, the big dumb diaper butt in front of her was acting infinitely more like a grown-up. But that was Susan. Maybe Susie, as Dakota couldn’t help but think of her, was a completely different person; a baby in an adult’s body.  

 

Would that happen to Dakota, she wondered?  Would she just cease to exist and then some two year old (if that) copy of herself would just take permanent residence in her skull?  “You’re not supposed to be this way.” She repeated.

 

The Forbie’s eyes fluttered, a random thought popping into her head.  “Don’t I get ta decide how I’m s’posed to be?”

 

Dakota’s diaper was already wet enough that it was getting difficult to tell just how wet it was; but she wouldn’t have been surprised if she had just let another little spurt out in surprise.   “But you didn’t,” she said. “The wish did.”

 

“But I made the wish,” Susie replied.  “You said.” Her tone wasn’t accusatory or mocking.  None of the bitterness that was making itself home in Dakota’s soul lingered in the other girl.  “It was my wish a long time ago. But it was still what I wanted.”

 

Dakota shook her head, disgusted, but with what or whom she couldn’t tell.  “What did you want?”

 

“Not to be my Mommy.”

 

The blonde girl blanched.  “Wuh? That’s kinda…dark.”

 

Dakota’s companion pushed herself up into a seating position, the crinkle of the diaper still audible in every move and little shift. “I don’t hate my Mommy,” she explained.  “When I got biggerer, she just wanted me to be more like her,” she took a breath, “And I just wanted to be…to be…me.”

 

Years of self-training, of droning out countless boyfriends as they rambled on about whatever self-important nonsense they were rambling about, told Dakota that Susie wasn’t done talking yet.  “I used ta be a tomboy,” Susie confessed. “I threw away all my pretty clothes and dollies because dressies and cutesy stuff is what Mommy wanted. I wanted different. It was fun rollin’ round in the mud and playin’ with the boys…” a slight blush came over Susie. “I think I’m gonna do that more later,” she added “but now I get to be a girly-girl too.”

 

Ten feet away on the changing table, Kelsey let loose a fresh gush of pee-pee just as her new diaper was being slid underneath her.  The poor little bird buried her face in the palms of her hands while the grown-up sighed and began re-wiping her. “There’s less difference ‘tween boys and girls right now,” Susie kept on rambling.  “We all squish and stink and then get changed and smell pretty and like soft and squishy and fluffy things. So I can do both if I want to.”

 

Flashes of Brendan’s rejection of her for ‘cooties’ bubbled up to the surface.  The slightest pang of heartbreak echoed inside of her. “I wouldn’t bet on that.  Boys suck.” Shouldn’t have said suck. Just the thought of it made her lips itch for her paci.

Susie frowned.  “What happened to you?”

 

“I grew up.”

 

“Yeeeeeeah,” Susie said. “That’s not workin’ on me.  How’d you turn into such a…a…a…?”

 

“B-word?” Dakota offered, unable to say the actual swear word.

 

The other girl’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! That’s it! A brat! How’d you turn into a brat?  You used to be so nice and cute.”

 

“Till I wasn’t…” Dakota mumbled a little too loudly. Crinkling all the way, Susie crawled over to Dakota and sat directly in front of her, like a puppy begging for attention.  Darn it. Dakota wasn’t getting out of this too easily. “I used to be the cute and precious one in my family,” she explained. “Then my little sister was born, and I wasn’t the baby anymore.  I was four. I couldn’t out-cute her. So I found…other ways to get attention.”

 

“Like bein’ bratty?”

 

The brat pressed her finger to Susie’s lips.  “Don’t interrupt. I’m only saying this because that grown-up can’t figure out how to button up Kelsey’s plastic pants.  Long story short, I couldn’t make people like me, but I figured out how to make people hate me. Then I figured how to make people fear me.  Then puberty came and I figured out how to make people want me,” she gestured to her body as if she needed no further explanation on that front.  “And somewhere along the line, that became normal. I needed attention, I figured out how to get it…and yeah…attention is what I got.”

 

“But you didn’t get nothin’ else, didja?” Susie observed.  “Like love, or happiness or that other stuff that matters. You stopped bein’ the baby, and you haven’t been happy since.”

Dakota slumped down again.  “Yeah…” The other girl leaned in to give her a hug.  This time Dakota didn’t stop her. It felt nice.

 

“Look on the bright side,” Susie said. “You get to be the baby again. At least for a little while.”

 

A lightbulb went on over Dakota’s head.  “What do you mean ‘a little while’?”

“When we unwish this wish.”

 

Confused, Dakota asked, “You mean you like being a big baby but you’re still going to help us?”

 

The newest forever baby scoffed. If it were possible for a giant infant to look well and truly offended, this is what it looked like.  Susie said, “Of course I am!” For once in her life, Dakota was at a loss for words. Fortunately Susie had enough to spare. “I like bein’ drunk too, but I don’t wanna be drunk forever.  And you guys are my bestest friends. I’d do anything for you.”

 

Some long unrealized tension left Dakota’s soul.  She’d been assuming that Susie wouldn’t be helping them from here on out.  Maybe there was more than a little Susan left inside that baby brain. Over Susie’s shoulder, Dakota made out the last of the poppers being snapped into place on Kelsey’s diaper cover.  “One thing that keeps bugging me,” Dakota said in hurried tones. “We all wished on that start together and it changed the world. Don’t we need to wish on that fountain together?”

 

“Yeah?”  Susie nodded. “So?”

 

“In case you didn’t notice,” Dakota said, “we don’t have our own cars.”

 

Susie smirked.  “So? We can fix that easy.”

 

“How?”

 

“Oh Susan,” a daycare worker called out, “Look who you left at the changing table.”  Kelsey was holding the grown-up’s hand, looking ashamed of herself. In the other hand was-

 

“FLOPSY!”

 

The big baby reached out and clutched the stuffed bunny like it was her most prized possession.  “Flopsy kept Kelsey company near the end while she was getting changed.” Kelsey’s face almost beat her padded bottom to the floor as she retook her seat next to the others.

 

Looking up at the grown-up standing above them staring down expectantly, Dakota knew it was her turn next.  She couldn’t though, she just couldn’t. She didn’t know what brilliant idea Susie had to get them all to Kelsey’s wishing fountain at the college.  The rational part of her brain told her she could just bring it up again after she got changed, but the fearful paranoid part of her brain panicked that Susan’s mind would drift off again into full blown Susie territory.  “I’m not ready to get changed, yet!” Dakota blurted out.

 

“Oh?” The grown-up asked. “Why not?”

 

How to stall? How to stall? Thinking quickly, Dakota rolled over onto all fours. “I’m…pooping?”  The grown-up leaned back from trying to pull the ex-gold digger to her feet. Dakota looked to Susie.  “How do we get to the fountain?”

 

Susie giggled. “We get our Mommies and Daddies to take us.”

 

A fart escaped the blonde bimbo baby.  If she could have slapped her own forehead without losing her balance, she would have.  Kelsey asked the question for their indisposed colleague: “Why would they take us?”

Their regressed friend scoffed. “Cuz we asked ‘em to.  We’re cuties now. And friends.”

“That doesn’t mean…” Dakota started, then stopped.  Uh-oh. This bluff was becoming more than a bluff.

 

“…That doesn’t mean they are,” Kelsey finished.

 

A sly, almost Cheshire cat smile crept across Susie’s mouth.  “We’re best friends now, remember? Betcha we’ve done sleepovers a million times.  They know each other.”

 

“Sleepover,” Dakota grunted.

 

Kelsey started connecting the dots.  “We do a sleepover with the fountain as a meeting spot for pickup…”

 

Dakota finished, “We can make…our wish.”  She finished more than just the sentence. For the second time that day, the back of her diaper was filled.  For the first time that day, she actually felt a sense of relief come with it. “Okay…” she panted, looking back up at the patiently waiting grown-up.  “I’m ready. Change me.”

22 minutes ago, vended said:

Damn. You keep dropping these very imaginative twists like it's nothing.   

You're really, really good at this. 

Thanks.  I guess that's my strong suit.

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This is probably the most interesting ABDL story I've ever read. I love the way they talk and interact while slowly regressing mentally in a subtle "unaware but aware" way.  Make me giggle like a little girl each time one of their words suddenly get replaced by a babyish counterpart. 

And now you're opening that in-plot quest for a new wish. 

I can't wait to see what you will make oit of this. 

 

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This is amazing what you've done with the dynamic between these three and the really clever magic system.

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16 hours ago, vended said:

This is probably the most interesting ABDL story I've ever read. I love the way they talk and interact while slowly regressing mentally in a subtle "unaware but aware" way.  Make me giggle like a little girl each time one of their words suddenly get replaced by a babyish counterpart. 

And now you're opening that in-plot quest for a new wish. 

I can't wait to see what you will make oit of this. 

 

Thank you! Most interesting ABDL story you've ever read?  That's quite a compliment. I'm glad you noticed the little touches with their mental regression.

16 hours ago, YourFNF said:

This is amazing what you've done with the dynamic between these three and the really clever magic system.

Thank you!  If I may wax philosophical for a moment.  Key components of this kink involve power loss, and of course, the outward appearance of early childhood.  That's all well and good for play scenes irl, but it also makes it challenging from a storytelling perspective. The loss of agency that comes with such infantile dependence often makes it so that the characters are blank slates, the world of the story doesn't expand outside the nursery, and things happen TO them instead of BECAUSE of them.  


So I've tried to establish the dynamic to make them a little more than just blank slates; and the nature of magic in this story gives...or at least gave them a sense of agency.

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On 7/19/2018 at 10:12 AM, ELLIE52 said:

This story is a hoot!  Just started reading so I have a long way to go to catch up, but I've had quite a few chuckles.  Love it so far.

Thank you!  Also "hoot" is the highest compliment I can get.  I always say "that was a hoot!" when I want to show just how much I like something without feeling like I'm laying it on thick.  So thank you!  Yeah, a lot of these scenarios that I write are absurd, so why not have a laugh at the absurdity.  Your chuckles are appreciated.

19 hours ago, JustinDB87 said:

Another excellent addition as always :) 

Your continued readership and taking the time to speak with me is always appreciated.

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