Lily (Chapter 26 up...and complete)

[WriteAndLeft]

Have you stopped working on this story?  I’d love to see a new chapter.

[Personalias]

4 hours ago, WriteAndLeft said:

Have you stopped working on this story?  I’d love to see a new chapter.

I'm still working on it.  But because every time I post on this story I get comments like "Are you still working on it?"  or "When's the next Chapter going to be done". I've stopped posting it until it's complete.  Then I'll release it on a steady schedule (weekly?  Daily?) Just so that it doesn't flood this thread.  

[shyab]

0ne the best stories i have read truely

[Personalias]

Chapter 16

“Welcome to my nightmare

I think you're gonna like it

I think you're gonna feel you belong

A nocturnal vacation

A necessary sedation

You wanna feel at home 'cause you belong”

Alice Cooper; Welcome to My Nightmare
 

“Open up, Athena!” the daycare attendant said.  “Here comes the choo-choo train!”

Lily opened her mouth as the umpteenth spoonful of strawberry applesauce chugga-chugga-chooed into her mouth.  Applesauce.  It was always applesauce it seemed. Blueberry applesauce.  Cinnamon applesauce. Pear applesauce. Strawberry-banana applesauce. Cherry applesauce.

 

  Lily hated applesauce, now.  Just sick of it.  Lily understood why this place stuffed her and the others so full with pureed fruit, though.  It was close enough to baby food in texture to maintain headspace for the cultists and easy to add in dietary supplements and drugs .  That and Lily was pretty sure by this point that somebody within the cult owned stock in Mott’s.

Didn’t mean she was any less sick of the stuff.  Times like this, she was glad it was socially acceptable to spit and drool from time to time.  If she did it right, she could make sure enough ended on her bib as to not be salvageable by spoon.  The dumb kids (and they were all dumb) would drool or gush out the mush uncontrollably as soon as too much was in their mouth, only to have a spoon catch their back wash and heap it back in their food holes.

Lily?  Lily knew when to swallow, and when to spit. She’d almost made an artform of holding that last heaping spoonful in her mouth and waiting for the guard to turn their attention to another Reborn.  Then she just had to giggle and let the mush slide out of her mouth and down her chin.
I didn’t help much.  Far too much Granny Smith pulp still made it down her throat on a daily basis, but at this point it wasn’t about starving herself as much as a kind of quiet rebellion.  Whatever made the most work for the people in charge of her.  They wanted a full-time baby?  She’d find ways to give it to them.

In the most perverse way, she was happy when her stomach was feeling queasy or her bowels irritated. 

“Oh Athena!” the lady groused.  “I can’t turn my back on you for a second, can I?  Nope.  No she couldn’t.  Lily made a show of clapping and bouncing up and down in her seat as the worker dragged a baby wipe over her face as another lobotomized brat cried out for their spoonful of fruit mush.   

As she bounced in not-quite mock delight, Lily’s seat squished beneath her.  Wet again.  Damn.  Figures. At least changing time happened right after lunch time. Then came naptime.  A nice nap.  A good way to pass the time until Daphne and her Daddy came to her rescue.  Lily started looking around.  

Where was Daphne anyways?  Surely Spy Girl or whatever she was had to keep up appearances, didn’t she?  Maybe her absence meant something was going smoother than intended.  Maybe it meant that soon she’d be-

“Or,” a far too familiar voice interrupted Lily’s thoughts,  “it means that she’s not coming back.  Did you think about that, Lily?”
 

The room froze.  “Shit,” Lily grumbled.  “I’m dreaming again…”  There was no skater punk anthem playing, yet Lily’s own personal dream devil sauntered in all the same.  Same trashy, zoot-suit; like a palette swapped Mask.  It looked ridiculous.  Those snakeskin boots though...

 

“It’s more than just a dream” Levi said.  “But I think you know that.”  Unconsciously, Lily wiggled her bottom again.  She was probably wet in real life too, more than likely.  Spitefully she hoped she’d leaked so that Darling would have to do more bedsheets.  “You’re dreaming that this wussername is coming to save you.  But just like when you can’t find your way to class, or you lost your car keys; she ain’t comin’.”

 

“Of course she’s not coming,” Lily shrugged, trying to keep her cool.  Best not to give this nightmare the rise he wanted.  “This is just a dream.”

“She’s not coming in real life, either.” Levi hissed.  He sauntered up to her highchair.  “So don’t get any hopes up…” he dipped a pinky finger into the apple sauce.  “Unless we’re talking new and improved flavors.  That I can maybe manage.  Free of charge.”

Lily forgot her own advice. She slapped the tray of her highchair. “I’m getting out of here!  I’m escaping!”

“What?” Levi smirked.  “You think they’re gonna make it outta this?  You’ll see Daphne again.  Except you’ll go a couple months without seeing her, and she’ll look like this.”

An image of Daphne appeared in the highchair next to her.  Her head was shaved into a pixie cut, her diaper was extremely discolored brown and she had that vacant look that Lily had become all too familiar with when looking at her daycare playmates.  “That’s not going to happen.”

“Getting one over on your Mommy isn’t that hard,” the nightmare laughed.  “You’ve been doing it for over a year now!”

Lily wanted to shriek.  Wanted to leap out of the highchair and tackle this part of her subconscious.  But she was just as helpless here as when she was awake.  “She’s not my Mommy!”

He ignored her protest. “Best case scenario, they’ll abandon you and not get caught.  They’ve seen everything they needed to see.  They weren’t even looking for you, remember?”

“But they found me!”

Levi picked up the applesauce and spoon, stirring it around before scooping up some more of the mush.  “And they’ll leave you.  Open up.”

Lily felt her jaw all but unhinge so that more of the applesauce could be spooned in.  She didn’t even have control over her body in her dreams, now.  Her mouth closed and swallowed.  “But I’m useful to them!  I’m a witness!”

Another spoonful in her mouth, and Levi mused while she swallowed another gulp.  If she was lucky, maybe she’d swallow her tongue in her sleep.  That was a thing, right?  “As far as they know, sure,” Levi said.  “But how long until they find out about that imported piece of ass?  The one who is still speaking language in front of everybody?  It ain’t English, but translators are easy enough to find.  They even got software for that. Dictionaries.  That kinda stuff.  Bitch might even know enough ‘Engrish’ to get by.  Then where will you be?”

“That’s not going to happen!” Lily slapped the spoon out of Levi’s  “Both of us will get rescued!”

“But if they can only rescue one, wouldn’t it be easier to rescue the one who can still walk?” Levi pressed.  “She probably doesn’t even really need diapers.  You still had that pink stuff shot into you in utero.  Little Miss Saigon or whatever her name is clean as a whistle.”

“That won’t happen...”

“Then why didn’t you mention her when you had the chance?  Afraid of getting left behind.  You must be if I’m saying it.  I’m only a figment of your imagination, right?”

“It WON’T happen!”

“I get it,” Levi sneered, “you were jealous.  It’s okay.  Little ones get jealous from time to time.”

“I am NOT jealous!” Lily snapped.  “I’m a victim!  I’m a survivor! I’m an adult!  I’m a grown-up! I’mma big-!”

  The monster waggled his finger.  “Ah-ah-ah! Don’t crack up, yet.  We had a deal, remember?  You get to keep your marbles in this little slice-o-paradise.”  He tapped Lily on the forehead.  “And I get your soul.”

“Fine!” Lily shrieked.  “You get my soul!  I’ll go to Hell when I die! Whatever! But I’m getting out of here!”  It was hard to get someone out of your head when they were your particularly nasty imaginary friend.  Hallucinations were frustrating that way.

Levi frowned.  For the first time since Lily had invented him, the snake of a man seemed somewhat offended; hurt even.  “Hell?  When you...?  I don’...I’m not…  Lily, gorgeous, sweetheart, baby, toddler, rugrat, infant...is that what you think this is about?  When you die?!  That wasn’t the deal.”  He ran his hand down his face, as if trying to contain his laughter.  “No, Lily Darling.  I don’t want your afterlife.  I want your soul.”
 

The poor girl blanched.  “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“You're a smart girl,” he winked. “You’ve still got your brains.  You’ll figure it out.”

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP!

This time, the nightmare winced.  “The fuck was that?”

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP!

Lily’s eyes shot open.  An alarm clock?  No. Not quite.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP! 

Where was it coming from?

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP!

Under the mattress!

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP!

Like out of an old escape movie, Lily scrambled to one side of her crib so that she could peel back the opposite side.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOP!

The vibrating phone and ringing bluetooth rang out and shone like a beacon in the dark of the night.  Grunting and straining to hold the mattress back, Lilly stretched and reached for the phone. 

It had been an eternity since she’d held one, or so it felt. 

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! BEE-BOOOOOOOOP!

Tingles of joy danced through her arm as the thing kept wringing.  She almost didn’t want to answer it for fear that the same sleazy voice on the other end would ring out; and reveal that this was just another level of the same dream.

Desperation does funny things though.  Lily put the earpiece in and answered the phone.

 

Silence.

“Hello?” The voice said.  It sounded distant, but somewhat familiar.  “Hello?”  Familiar, but in a good way.  “Who is this?”  It was a man’s voice too. 

Lily wanted to scream her name. Remembering the baby monitor in the room, Lily thought better of it.  Instead, “Baga-acma mamamababa?”  Mrs. Darling was probably drunk and passed out in her room, but probably wasn’t odds Lily was willing to take.  The lush would be less worried if she just thought she hears ‘Athena’ babbling.

There was a brief pause as whoever was on the other line took it all in.  “If this is Lily and you’re afraid of being listened in on, say ‘Papa Gaga’.

Lily braced herself and then replied. “Papa Gaga.”

“Okay, then.  Just listen, Lily.  Turn this off as soon as it’s over.  It only has so much battery.  Okay?”

“Papa Gaga…”

“Good.  Here’s the next thing.  There’s no daycare tomorrow, but I heard you had a playdate, right?”

Lily thought about saying the same bit of gibberish again; but babies didn’t tend to repeat themselves in such specific ways.  “Moo-moo-ag-ag-ag.”


“Really hoping you’re just improvising, kid.  Uh...hit a number button if I’m right.”  Lily did. 

BOOP!

“Okay.  Don’t scare me like that. So here’s the deal.  That phone only has one number in its contacts.  Call that number, and the second it picks up, you’ll be being recorded.  Got it?”

Lily pushed another button.  Three in fact.  Both an affirmation that she was listening, and maybe even a question.

BOOP-BEEP-BEEP!

“Boop-beep-beep?” The man...the one who had been with Daphne, said.  “Hold on, lemme try something.”

BOOP-BEEP-BEEP! The same tones came back over Lily’s earpiece.

“Do you mean 9-1-1?”

BOOP!

“You don’t wanna call 9-1-1, kid.” The man on the other line cautioned her.  “Locals are more than on the take here.”  Lily frowned, more at having her own worst fears confirmed.  There was a reason she’d never tried it before.  “If you can before Saturday, give us a call.  If you can, try to get somebody talking about stuff they shouldn’t be.  If you can’t, just call to check in so we know you’re alright.  Deal?”

BOOP!

“Deal.”

The other line hung up.  As instructed Lily turned off the phone and ditched it and the earpiece inside her pillow case.  For the first time in forever, Lily didn’t feel quite so alone.

Hope is hard to come by in Hell.  But hope is what Lily now had.  More than hope: Opportunity.  Plenty of opportunity to catch two or more awful people talking shop.  And also an opportunity to prove Levi wrong.  

Her playdate with Trinh was tomorrow.  No doubt Mrs. Darling and her new rival would be trying to outdo each other on who was the best ‘Mommy’.  And she might actually get a chance to privately communicate with another person who was in the same position she was.  For the first time ever, Lily was looking forward to a playdate.
 

[BabySofia]

Glad to see an update to this! Really rooting for Lily to manage to escape here... 

[Personalias]

 

Chapter 17
 

“It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

Nothing remains quite the same

With all of our running and all of our cunning

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane”

Jimmy Buffet; Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
 

Melissa normally liked playdates.  It was something she’d regretted missing out on back when all her other friends were having children.  The little ones would get to play, crawling and toddling about on the carpet or in the grass, while the gals got to bond over common experiences and stresses.  Playdates were just as much for Mommies and Daddies as they were for the babies.  It was socialization for all ages during a period of life where being a parent might otherwise isolate you.
 

Concerning Reborns, Melissa might argue that it was MORE for the Mommies and Daddies than the babies.  Friends were important for kids to make, true, but did it really matter so much when they’d never grow up?  It’s not like Athena would ever need to worry about social status or the opinions of her peers:  She would always be at that “age” where Melissa did the heavy lifting for her.  Babies never got snubbed for parties and sleepovers and get togethers. But their parents did.

That’s why she and Athena were here, visiting that insufferable woman, Tammy.  Tammy, with her know-it-all self-important attitude and her entourage of parents with imported hard case Reborns.  Tammy and her ilk were threats to the status quo.  Being the status quo, Melissa didn’t like that one bit at all.  She had learned long ago, however, that you didn’t deal with threats by hiding or ignoring them.  You dealt with them by boldly charging in head first.  Jack never could figure that lesson out.
 
It was a long time, too long, between the time Melissa rang the doorbell and the time she heard movement from inside the house.  Her arms had started to ache, and her back was already hurting.  Melissa was already starting to regret her decision to carry Athena up to the door.  

 

It had made sense a few minutes ago: Tammy Maxwell’s house was too far away for a simple stroller ride.  It wouldn’t have made sense to pack up the stroller, load the baby into her carseat, unpack the stroller, load the baby in, walk twenty feet, go inside then let the baby out.  Besides, being able to cart around Athena like she was a one-year-old in body as well as mind was one of Melissa’s favorite Mommy flexes. 

However, even real one-year-olds got heavy, and any flex started to hurt if held long enough.  Holding was the problem.  Every other time Melissa had done this with Athena, she’d always been moving her baby girl somewhere: The crib, the changing table, the playpen, the highchair, the bathtub.  Now, Melissa was being reminded that carrying something and holding something were two different tacks.  Heavy bundles of joy didn’t seem so heavy when there was a clear destination in sight.

 

Tentatively, Melissa looked down at the ground.  No.  She would not put Athena down.  No way was her beautiful Reborn baby girl going to scuff her knees up on the barely dried concrete walkway.  

 

At the very least, it did give her a second to adjust the scrunchies in Athena’s hair. More and more, Melissa was coming to the conclusion that she just adored pigtails.  The yellow romper dress she’d picked out looked cute, and the matching diaper cover had sunflowers lightly stenciled in.  The yellow scrunchies just completed the outfit.  Bright beautiful and sunny from top to bottom. 

Truthfully, Melissa had spitefully considered not dressing Athena at all and just bringing her over in nothing but a disposable.  She had a feeling that that might make Tammy uncomfortable- what with her holier than thou ethos on the use of cloth.  It might make Tammy’s “daughter”uncomfortable, too, considering that the woman had been “Reborn” without being properly reprogrammed and regressed. 

The sight of such a perfectly happy and infantile baby; one who was perfectly content being naked, might actually unnerve someone like Tammy and her “toddler”.  Athena didn’t need wrist restraints and sake to behave.  When she babbled, it was actual baby speak, and not some third world Asian language or another.

No.  That wouldn’t do at all.  Never play your trump card first.  It wasn’t much of a card, anyways.  There had been plenty in Tammy’s inner circle whose mail order babies had been properly wound back instead of just wound up.  Parading Athena with just a diaper and her tits out would only make Melissa seem like trailer trash.  That and she really did love dressing her daughter in all of her pretty outfits.

Finally, there was a series of beeps and the turning of locks before Tammy Maxwell opened the door to her home.  Both she and Melissa-two tigers at the top of the mountain- locked eyes, bared their teeth...and smiled.  “Hiiiiiiiiiii!”

“Please, come in.”  Tammy gestured inside.  Holding her breath from the strain, Melissa crossed the threshold into enemy territory while the host played and entered a complex keycode into an electronic pad just above the door.  Another problem with having a “toddler”, Melissa thought: they actually understood things like child safety locks, meaning more drastic security measures were needed.

“Where should I put her down?” Melissa asked of Athena. 

Tammy didn’t look up from entering the security code.  “Playpen in the living room is fine.  I keep one there so Trinh can play with her younger friends.  A half dozen or so steps later, Melissa was at the edge of the giant playpen.  It was almost exactly like the one at home, too!  A shame, Melissa didn’t know whether or not to hold that against Tammy.  

 

A not so little girl already sat in the play-pen.  Like Athena she was perfectly petite; but it was difficult for Melissa to think of the diapered woman like she did so many other Reborns.  And diapered she was!  By some coincidence, the girl’s outfit was almost identical to Athena’s.  Her hair wasn’t in pigtails this time, but her romper dress was almost the exact same shade of yellow.  The most noticeable difference was how padded her rear was!  It was as if the girl had three body pillows wrapped around her ass!  The pretty little dress seemed so much shorter by comparison.

When Trinh saw Melissa set Athena down, she put her sippy cup down and said something that Melissa couldn’t even begin to translate.  But based on the tone, she seemed excited.  She’d recognized Athena!  Of course she recognized Athena!  Athena was the cutest and most memorable baby in the world...that and this “toddler” actually had something passing for an adult memory.

On wobbly legs, the girl stood up and did her best to toddle over to their side of the playpen.  Melissa had seen plenty of walking Reborns this last year, but there was something off about the gait.  It was TOO weebly.  TOO wobbly.  A cynical part of Melissa’s mind whispered that it was an act.  Not something that came naturally but a feigned behavior to avoid punishment and drugs.

“Careful now, dear,” Melissa said, slowly and calmly.  She held out both her hands, palms out in what she hoped was a universal gesture for “slow down”.  Trinh did slow down, but in doing so lost her balance.  Her arms flailed wildly and she let out a gasp just before falling back on her triple diapered rear.

“Don’t worry,” Tammy said, poking her head over Melissa’s shoulder. “Happens all the time.  My big girl just can’t quite get the hang of walking some days.”

Looking at the girl’s feet, Melissa could tell why.  She saw the balled bottoms of the shoes.  She also caught a glimpse of the locks on the sides.  Same for a little gold padlock over the plastic panties.  The sippy cup was clear, and filled with something dark.  Rum, Melissa guessed from experience. 

Poor thing.  Melissa really meant it too.  She was  imagining how awful it would be to force someone to act like a baby instead of just turning them into one.  So unnecessary.  So impractical.  So cruel.

“Let’s let the children play,” Tammy said. “I’ll pour you a drink.”

Melissa’s throat suddenly felt terribly dry, but she couldn’t help feeling.  Letting her baby alone with other harmless babies? Sure.  Letting Athena play with an adult dressed up like one…?  “Hmmm…..”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tammy said.  “But Trinh is magnificent with little ones.  Every time one of them tries to stick something in their mouth or is going to do something dangerous, she screams and yells so I can come running.  She’s so sweet.  I’ve seen her yank a few crayons out of noses.”

Melissa felt herself soften a bit.  “Oh…”

“Keeping them in their two’s isn’t so terrible,” Tammy smiled.  “There’s upsides.”

 

And so it was that the two sat down across from each other in the dining room, their adoptive children just a room and a sideways glance away.  Not that either of them spared such a glance.  They were too busy sipping on rum and cokes, measuring each other up.

“So…”  Melissa started

“So…” Tammy echoed.

 

“You have a lovely home.”

“Thank you, I’m decorating it myself.”

“Oh you must come to our home. We’ve got a similar layout; I’m sure you’d love it.”

“I’m sure I might,” Tammy replied. “Even if there was nothing in there that would be a good fit for my home.”

Melissa grinned.  “To each their own, so long as they’re only hurting themselves…”

A long pause followed.
 

It was Tammy who broke first.  “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

Melissa finished her drink.  “Not at all,” she lied.  “What makes you say that?”

Social climber that she was, Tammy didn’t quite take the bait. “I’ve been asking around, and it sounds like you and I are a lot alike.  Everyone I’ve met says as much.”  Inwardly Melissa cringed, but didn’t reply.  Bitch had a point.  They were both type A plus personalities.  Being a mega type A though, meant that Melissa wanted to stay in control.  She neither agreed nor disagreed and let the silence do the talking for her.  Finally, Tammy spoke again.  “Everyone says you’re a wonderful mother who wants the best for her baby.”

“Every parent wants what’s best for their child.”  She glanced over to where Athena and the other girl were playing.  Athena seemed to be quietly nuzzling Trinh.  She was a relatively quiet baby, preferring nuzzles and light giggles to laughter and screams.   Drunk toddler girl seemed to be taking it well enough.  “All the good ones anyway.”

Tammy ignored the barb, and kept going.  “And I think we’re both good ones.  I want to give my Trinh a better life than she had.  One where she doesn’t have to work or whore her body out for random Johnnies.”

The way she said it, made Melissa actually consider for a moment on whether or not this newcomer was being sincere.  “And I want my Athena to have those same luxuries, too.”  She bit her tongue for half a second so she could formulate a more gentle rebuff.  “And like most of the members of this community, I see infancy as a state of mind more than a chronological age.”

“Oh I agree,” Tammy said, “Completely.  Trinh had next to no formal education.  I’m pretty sure she’s illiterate in whatever language she spoke before I was impregnated with her.  She was little more than a giant Kindergartener before.”  She sighed.  “I just always wanted a two or three year old.  A baby that I could cuddle with, but she could also tell me when she’s hungry or needs a change.”

“Athena learns from her mistakes,” Melissa said.  “But she’s still very much a baby.”  Admittedly, she seemed a little quicker on the uptake than her peers, but that just meant that she’d been a smart baby the first time around.

“And Trinh is very much a baby, too.”  Tammy said, finishing her drink.  “But she just requires more...more…”  Tammy stopped herself.  “I’m getting off point.  I want Trinh to make friends.  I want her to play and enjoy it.  This is a real second chance for her.  But…” 

“But?” Melissa echoed.  She smelled weakness here.  She smelled it and was exhilarated by it.

“But I feel I’ve made some bad first impressions,” Tammy admitted.  “Trinh isn’t allowed in the daycare.  Too much of a flight risk, they say.  Possibly dangerous to the other kids who don’t know any better.  In Alaska, where there was nowhere to run, it wasn’t a problem…”

A sly grin crept across Melissa’s face.  “But here in sunny Florida,” she finished, “there’s less margin for error.”  She thought about some rumors that had trickled down the gossip tree over the last several days.   “And I’d wager that the rest of your little circle is having an easier time fitting in than you.”

There.  That look.  That blank expression with burning fury just beneath the surface.  Nerve hit.  Point for Melissa.  “Some of them have completely switched over to disposables…”  Tammy muttered, shaking her head.  “No offense.”

Melissa snorted.  “See?” Melissa said. “That’s it right there.”

“What is?  Wanting something that is better for the environment?”  Tammy was sitting straight up.

The buzz was reaching Melissa’s head now, loosening her tongue.  “It’s that shade throwing.  That holier than thou attitude.”  Melissa raised her voice into a mocking falsetto.  “Oh, look at me, I use cloth.  My baby is from Japan, or whatever.”  She folded her arms.  “Who cares? Really?”

“But we helped them escape poverty and war and drugs!”

“Bull, honey.  We found life’s leftovers and made them our own.  And we did it for them, yeah, but we did it for us just as much if not more!” Melissa knew she wasn’t just saying this to Tammy anymore.  “I didn’t get into this because I wanted to make the world a better place, and neither did you. Nobody becomes a mother just because they want to make the world a better place; it’s because they need an outlet for their love.  And nobody becomes OUR kind of mother because they’re concerned for the next generation of society!  Why do you think I renamed my daughter Athena?”

Tammy blinked.  “Why did you?”

“It’s like that Greek Myth,” Melissa said. “The goddess that burst out of Zeus’s head, full grown. That seemed about as unconventional a birth to me as what I was willing to go through."

“But like you said,” Tammy said, “Athena came out of Zeus’ an adult.”

Melissa blinked slowly like a contented cat.  “And my Athena came out full grown.  Meaning she had no more growing left to do.”

Tammy’s eyes lit up.  “Ooooh! That is clever!”

“Thank you.”

“The others were right, you are good at what you do.”

Melissa might’ve asked ‘what friends’, but she’d already figured that Tammy had done her homework.  This wasn’t a social call, this was a plea for help.  “That’s how you thrive and influence this community,” Melissa said, “You don’t tell people how you’re better than they are, you just do what you do best and let people be drawn to you.  There’s enough of us here that if you don’t like someone, you don’t have to play with them.”  She couldn’t help but feel a half smirk form at the upper right corner of her mouth.

“Very true,” Tammy said.  “Very true.” She took a deep breath.  “Let’s start over?  Let me reintroduce you to my circle?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Melissa said.  “Let’s just form a bigger one.”  One that Melissa ran, but she didn’t feel like she should say that part out loud.

“Oh that’s a splendid idea,” Tammy said. “After all, it’s not about where your babies came from, it’s about being the best mother possible to them now!”  A little more life entered her eyes.  This battle wasn’t over quite yet.  If anything, sweeping the board clean just meant that a new game was about to be played.

Good.  Melissa liked the challenge, especially if she had home field advantage.  Time for the first shot.  “Of course,” she said, “there’s also the advantage that when more people realize what a harmless little angel your Trinh is they might make room for her in the daycare system.”

Tammy stood up. “Quite right,” she said. She sounded pleasant, but a little disappointed that Melissa had figured that last part out.  She walked to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of rum and two more cokes.  “Shall we plan?”

The two women went about in a blur, pitching ideas to one another on how to get the most parents and their children involved.  More importantly, they talked about how to make themselves the star of whatever show they put on; even if they never used those words.

“Halloween is coming up. Costume party?” Tammy suggested.

“Cute,” Melissa said.  “Very cute.  Maybe a safe trick or treating thing?”

“Maybe…” Tammy said.  “What about a baby pageant?”

Melissa shook her head.  “Mmm-mmmm...Pageants don’t work in small towns.  EVERYBODY’s got the best baby as far as they’re concerned.  Trophies and Tiaras build the wrong kind of jealousy.”

“True,” Tammy conceded.  “We want to make a good impression.  What about a Mommy Daddy contest?    We can have fun little games, like faster diaper changer, and bottle feeding and burping!  A crawler derby and a toddler race.  With silly little prizes.  Go full on county fair!”

Melissa nodded.  “That could work...that could work.”  She downed her fifth glass that day and realized how bad she needed to pee.  Speaking of which, Athena was probably soaked.  She should get around to checking and changing the girl.  Still... “Maybe we’re overthinking this…” she said.  “Why don’t we just throw a party, let the babies play and the adults socialize.”

“Well we have to be doing something,” Tammy insisted.  “We’ve got to do something stimulating for the babies too.  We can’t just plop them in a highchair, turn on the T.V. and drink wine.  We’ve got to parent, too!”
 

Melissa wasn’t sober, but the sudden flush of anger made her feel close enough.  “I beg your pardon?”

Tammy had had a few too, and it was causing her to show her true colors.  “I read to Trinh every day.  She’s a toddler and requires more stimulation than just being a...a...prop!” 

So much for this alliance.

Melissa shot up.  “You mean that the grown-ass-woman in your home isn’t really a baby in either mind or body and you’re afraid to let her self-stimulate for too long because she’s a goddamn prisoner who’ll escape the first chance she gets!”

“HOW DARE YOU!”  Now Tammy was on her feet.

“You’re not a real mother,” Melissa spat.  “You’re a virtue signalling fake that couldn’t be bothered to do the ONE THING Rebirthing is all about and now insists on being accommodated.  You’re no Mommy...you’re a...you’re a...a FETISHIST!”

Tammy lifted up her blouse and pointed to the scars on her abdomen.  “YOU CALL THIS FAKE?!”

Melissa reciprocated by showing her own.  “BIG DEAL! WE’VE ALL GO THOSE! WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE IS A BABY!”

 

“SHE’S! A! TODDLER!”

Both women stared each other down, panting, teeth bared like lionesses ready for the kill.  And in that silence, both realized something.

“The kids…” Melissa said.

“They’re quiet…” Tammy said.  “No crying...no noise.  How long have they been alone?”

The two looked over to the family room.  An empty playpen was what greeted them.  Melissa’s heart stopped.  “Athena?” she said.  “Where’s Athena?”  A million threats and terrible deeds came to Melissa’s mind.  She was just too scared. 

Had Trinh escaped?  Run away?  If so had she taken Athena with her?  Athena would make a terrible partner, and almost as bad as a hostage.  Every nightmare that Melissa had had since being given her baby girl was starting to foment and seem truer and truer.  A snickering little voice; one that oddly sounded like Dr. Anguis, even suggested that Athena had been faking it all along.  

The girl had never gotten a booster shot because she’d never needed one...or maybe she had needed that final push over the edge and had been just smart enough to fake it.  And as silly as that sounded, Melissa had to consider it for an instant.

“The nursery!”  Tammy said.  “Maybe they’re in the nursery.”

Drunk and panicked, Melissa lost a shoe on her sprint to the back of the house.  She didn’t even know where the nursery was, but she wasn’t about to wait to find out.

 

As it turned out, Tammy was right.  When Melissa flung open the one closed door she found, she saw a giant baby’s room, with two giant babies playing quietly on the carpet.  Trinh was babbling in some foreign language, putting on a kind of puppet show for the other girl.  Athena sat quietly, watching wide eyed as the animals seemed to talk in different nonsensical, high pitched, and growly voices.  She clapped and giggled as each one pretended to kiss her on the cheek.

Both of the padded girls seemed to be oblivious to the two older women peeking in on them.  Speaking of diapers; at least one of them needed to be changed by the smell of it.

“Awwww,” Tammy said,  “Trinh just wanted to show Athena her stuffed animals.  Isn’t that sweet?”

Damn it.  It was.  It really was.  “I’m sorry,” Melissa said, not looking her host in the eye.  “I misjudged you.  Both of you.”

“That makes us even,” Tammy replied.  “Nobody but a true mother would run that fast for their child. You’re the real deal, sugar.”  They stayed there for a minute, all four of them.  The two girls playing with each other, and the two women just watching. 

“Come on, let’s change them.”  Melissa said.  “They need it.”

Tammy went forward into the nursery.  Melissa doubled back to the dining room so she could snatch up Athena’s diaper bag.   “That’s right, big girl!” she heard, Tammy cooing from the door.  “Time to get changed!”  Admittedly, if she hadn’t known any better, Melissa might’ve assumed Tammy was talking to an actual child.

Trinh was already on the changing table, her arms crossed over her chest and huffing as her adoptive mother unsnapped the diaper cover.  It was a decidedly, non-infantile gesture, and Melissa wondered why the girl wasn’t struggling more.  She quickly got her answer when she saw the shades of brown as all three layers of cloth were peeled back.  Messy accident.  Big one.

That explained it.  True Reborn or not, nobody liked sitting in a poopy diaper for long.  Come to think of it, the way the girl huffed and crossed her arms might not be particularly babyish, but she could imagine the same behavior coming from a not-quite potty trained toddler.

Hmmm…

Empathy for a rival.  How odd.

Like a good baby, Athena in the middle of the floor, sucking her thumb.  With practiced ease Melissa spread out the changing pad and guided her daughter over to it.  “Let’s get you cleaned up in a jiffy, baby girl.”  She looked over her shoulder and up to Tammy who was still busy making sure safety pins didn’t stick her.

“Here,” Melissa said to Tammy, handing her a fresh diaper; one of Athenas.  “Try this.”

Tammy just stared, uncomprehendingly, her expression uncertain and guarded.  She looked like a vegan that had just had foie gras shoved in her face.  “No thank you.  We’ve got plenty of…-”

Melissa was ready for this argument. “Don’t worry about landfills,” she interrupted. “Most of them are starting to be turned into power plants anyways, and there’s debate whether cloth is greener due to carbon emissions from laundering them.  And yes, cloth is better for potty training, but we both know that’s not in the cards for our children.”  When Tammy was stunned enough to stop wiping her little one, Melissa explained.  “I may have done some research after our first meeting…”

“I don’t know…”

Melissa groaned.  “This isn’t a pressure tactic, this is a peace offering.”  She shook the disposable diaper for emphasis.  “That and Trinh’s going to have to wear these when she gets put into daycare.  They don’t do cloth as a rule.”

Tammy arched an eyebrow.  “When?”

“When.”

Tammy took the diaper.  The look on Trinh’s face could have been shock or delight.  She couldn’t tell.  Melissa would have liked to think that the disposable would be more comfortable.  One way or another, Trinh was about to find out.

Her back turned, Melissa let a smug expression come over her as she dug around in Athena’s bag and took out another diaper.  It had been a peace offering, but she may have been lying when she said the gesture wasn’t a pressure tactic.

Athena was still sucking her thumb, completely oblivious to the swollen and soaked Rearz on her bottom.  Like a good girl, she laid still as the residue of urine was wiped from her pelvis, and only sucked a little bit harder when a particularly sensitive region was wiped or powdered. 

Wobbly footed due to her special shoes, Trihn lifted up her skirt and stared down at her new diaper decorated with barnyard animals.  Melissa couldn’t tell what she was saying, but by the tone she sounded impressed. 

Tammy hadn’t bothered to slip the baby panties back over the Rearz, and so Melissa did the same.   The result was uncanny.  Near identical outfits, and matching diapers.   “They match,” Melissa marveled.  “They could almost be sisters.”

“Yes,” Tammy agreed.  “Yes they could.”

[Sarah Penguin]

[Cya]

I feel like there's some potential foreshadowing there. Nice to see that this is back up here. 

[WriteAndLeft]

Thank you for adding new chapters.

[Personalias]

Chapter 18

The door of the nursery closed behind them and the two old biddies gabbing away at nothing, Lily let out a surprised gasp.  “You speak English?”

“Sure I speak English,” Trinh scoffed. “I from Ho Chi Minh City. Big tourist city.  Everybody know a little English.”  Her accent was a bit thick in places, and her grammar was off.  Some of the l’s sounded like r’s, but Lily could understand what was being communicated.  “I been like this for close two years.  Why you speak English?”

Lily felt the blood drain away from her face.  Up to half a year ago, Lily might have been scared of sneaking away; afraid that the Mrs. Darling or any of her cohorts might notice that a Reborn was gone- or hear the crinkling of her diaper as she scampered off.  But the plastic rustling that came with every move she made was pure white noise to just about everyone in her life. 

The same could be said for the slight hissing sound whenever Lily wet herself, or the squish when she put her full weight on her seat. Every sound was more felt than heard.  Mrs. Darling and her fellow cultists were always too drunk or too self-involved to ever notice when Lily or one of her playmates went AWOL.  It was kind of like that cartoon but far less whimsical.

It had been too easy to sneak away out of the playpen and follow Trinh into her room.  Trinh hadn’t needed words to signal that Lily follow her, and Lily hadn’t needed a written invitation.

Now that they were alone, in private; some real paranoia could start to take root.

Speaking aloud?  Talking in a full sentence besides a sharp “no” to someone who had mush for brains or the sweet nothings she’d whisper to herself when she was feeling brave enough to masturbate? That was still far too foreign and dangerous a feeling for Lily.

 

Was this a trap?  Two more non-Reborns in just about as many days?  Could that be a coincidence? Was this all some kind of crazy setup?

Before opening her mouth, Lily listened for Mrs. Darling and Trinh’s mother.  She couldn’t make out the words, but the muted tones seemed like they were preoccupied, enough.  “I grew up in America,” Lily whispered. “Of course I speak English.”

 

Trinh rolled her eyes.  “I mean why you speak at all?  Everybody else here uhhh…” Trinh tapped herself on the forehead and then sucked her thumb, cartoonishly.  “Big baby.  It not an act.  You first person I see who not.”

 

“Same,” Lily lied.  Or was it?  Did undercover mean the same thing as not affected?  She’d thought her life wa complicated before. 

“Do your lady know you adult?”  Trinh pressed.  “Like me?”  Her ‘lady’.... Lily liked the thought of that.  It was the first time in forever that someone referred to Darling as something other than ‘Mommy’.  Even that acknowledgement was nice.

 

Lily shook her head.  “No.  Sometimes the drugs they put in our systems regress us completely the first time in fake utero.  I faked it so they don’t give me more.”  Trinh narrowed her eyes and mouthed a few words to herself.  The expression on her face reminded Lily of someone parsing out a particularly difficult math problem in their head.  Oops.  Trinh spoke English, but maybe not as fluent as Lily had thought.  “I got lucky,” Lily rephrased. “I fooled them.  Tricked them.”

A light came on behind Trinh’s eyes.  She nodded.  “Ah.  Very lucky.”  A deep hissing voice insisted to Lily that Trinh was very wrong.  Luck had nothing to do with it.

“What about you?” Lily asked.  “Why aren’t you..?” She repeated Trinh’s gestures.  Head tap. Thumb suck.  Less talking might be better in this instance.

Trinh shrugged. She sat on her knees and cocked her head to the side.  She too was listening to the self-made Mommies blather on the other side of the house.  “My lady didn’t want me that way.” 

“Lucky,” Lily echoed Trinh’s assessment.

This time Trinh shook her head.  “No.  Not lucky.”  Her eyes were closed.  “I was kidnapped. Taken.”

“Human trafficking is a big thing with prostitutes…” Lily said.  “No offense.”

More eye rolling and scoffing from Trinh.   “I not prostitute!” she hissed.  “I teacher!  That prostitute story is nhảm nhí!”

“Nom nee?” Lily did her best to repeat.

“Umm…” Trinh waggled her hands in the air searching for the word.  “Poopy?  From cow?”

“Oh! Bullshit!”  Lily’s voice raised a bit, and she bit down on her lip to help quiet herself.

“Yes.  Bullshit.”  Trinh didn’t sound nearly as excited now.  She closed her eyes again.  “I teacher.  I was teacher.  I worked with little ones.  Pre-school.”

“Then...how?” 

 

Trinh’s eyes didn’t open.  “Men come and offer me a job.  I go to U.S. for six months.  My English good...good enough.  I teach rich people Vietnamese.  Basic words.  Simple words.  Like how I teach little ones.  Then I get money and can go back home, or bring family here.”

Lily sank a bit into the floor. “It didn’t work out that way.”  Obviously, not a question.  “Why does your lady say you were a prostitute?”

“I don’t know,” Trinh answered.  “I’m not allowed to ask. I get away with Vietnamese because she not understand it.  She don’t care who I am. She just wants me act like big baby.”

A weight fell on Lily’s shoulders. This was more fucked up than she imagined.  Lily had thought she’d royally screwed up and had been caught in a suckers’ trap before; and in a way she had; but listening to Trinh’s truth, it made something else clear.  It wouldn’t have matter that Lily was being ‘saved’ from her insane debt, before.  That was just the hook that had been used to reel her in.  Most of those other Reborns probably weren’t drug mules or addicts either.  It was just what these monsters told themselves to justify ruining lives.  

 

“They really don’t care,” Lily said aloud. “Do they?”

“No.  They do not.”  Trinh opened her eyes, but she still avoided Lily’s gaze.  “They take me.  Tie me up, stick with tube on my belly button.  Then they stuff me in this...this...bag?  Then they fill it with funny water that I breathe.  Then I go to sleep.”

If Lily hadn’t already been wet, she’d have done so just then.  Flashbacks rocked her gray matter.  “I was tricked, too,” Lily said.  “I found out, but I was too late.”  She chose not to talk about how her back had been broken, teeth yanked, or tendons cut.  Saying it loud would make it all too real.  Fuck the fake umbilical chord or the time in the womb.  And yet…

“When you were um...asleep,” Lily asked, “did you dream?”

 

Trinh squinted her eyes again.  More math problems, so to speak. “Maybe?”

A glimmer of hope enter Lily.  “Anything about a man talking to you?  A man with snakeskin boots?  Or bad memories?  Or scary dreams?  Did you make a deal?”

Her newest companion flinched again as she squinted.  “No.  I don’t think so.”  She picked up the sippy cup full of booze and took a swig.  “Sorry.”

That bit of hope faded in Lily.  Her hallucinations were unique to her, it seemed.  That made sense though.  Drugs and trauma had different effects on different people; and no two people or traumas were exactly the same.  “So you can walk…” she offered. 

Trinh put down the sippy cup and made a face.  That wasn’t juice in that cup.  “They cut me out when I wake up.  Then they untie me.  Make me exercise till I walk again.  But they make me pretend I’m baby.”  She pointed to her shoes.  They were curved out like the bottom of a rocking horse.   “Hard to walk.  Not allowed to talk.  Not allowed to go toilet.”

As if on cue, Trinh made the same squinting and flinching expression.  She looked even more uncomfortable than before.  A few burbling noises from her backside clued Lily in as to what was going on.

Lily looked away as her companion grunted a load into her thick diapers.  “I’m still not potty trained, either.”  She said when the other girl was done.  “I’ve never been given a chance since I...y’know.  And my body just got used to it.”

 

The other woman in diapers nodded.  “Me too.” Then she took a few more gulps from the boozed up sippy cup.  “This helps...and hurts.”

“Yeah,” Lily noticed.  “Why are you drinking that, anyway?”  She’d had her own share of boozed up breast feeds, and had drawn a measure of stress relief from the activity; but she’d never actively sought it out.  The way Trinh was attacking the whiskey or whatever was in that cup, she would have fit right in with the “adults”.

Trinh crawled up closer to Lily and gestured to her mouth.  “Helps with pain.”

“What pai-?” Lily cut herself off.  The woman’s mouth was filled with wires!  Just below the gum line and under the tongue, metal wires ran all up and down Trinh’s mouth.  Lily had seen toothless Reborns or Reborns like herself with forced pumpkin-tooth grins, but she’d never seen a Reborn with this many crooked teeth.  “Braces?  You have braces?”

Trinh closed her mouth and looked away.  “For teething,” she whispered.  “Every few weeks I go to dentist.  They adjust wires and move teeth around.  It hurts.  Lady wants me to teethe and bite and drink more.”

Lily drew back. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yes.  It is.”

“These fuckers gotta pay.” To Lily, this was a truth as self-evident as all men being created equal.  

“I just want to go home,” Trinh said, her voice sounding strained.  “I miss my mother.  I miss my daughter.”

If Lily could have jumped she would have.  “You have a daughter?” she asked.  “Holy shit…” This was a new level of fucked up that she’d never taken the time to consider.  Evil was evil, but taking parents away from their kids just to treat them like infants in turn was a whole new flavor of the stuff.  How many other Reborns had been changing diapers before they themselves were forced into them?  It was all Lily could do to fight back the tears just imagining.

Trinh was not so lucky.  Her voice was steady, but she was still crying.  “She’s older than me, now.  Older than,” she gestured to her ridiculously infantile clothes, “this.  I want to see her again.”

 

The so-called Athena felt like a real heel just then.  Just the other day she was ready to escape this place and abandon this fellow survivor; this fellow victim.  Lily hadn’t been telling the truth when she’d reported that she was the only Reborn with all her marbles.  Even more guiltily, Lily had to admit that in some ways Trinh had it worse.

  Unlike Lily, she was knowingly tortured and tormented.  Every freedom that Trinh had was more pageantry than anything else; a show of power on Tammy’s part; and because of it she suffered more.  Trinh couldn’t play the regressed card to get away with anything, and she was punished more harshly no doubt since she “knew better”.  Lily had managed to game the system for a year.  Trinh had just been a victim and realized it.

Also Unlike Lily, Trinh might have a life worth going back to.  People who needed and loved her.  Lily suspected that she hadn’t even been missed by her own parents.  She’d found no evidence to the contrary.
Maybe there was a way to make it right.

Lily reached down past the front of her dress and pulled out the cell phone she’d brought with her.   After being dressed for the day, she’d smuggled it in between her boobs; knowing that her diaper would be checked more often than her dress.  A dumb plan, perhaps; Lily wasn’t what she would consider well-endowed and wasn’t allowed the simple modesty of a bra, but it paid off.  Sometimes ‘just stupid enough to work’ actually did.

 

“Here,” Lily said.  “Take this.”

“What’s this?” Trinh said, confused.

Lily did her best to remember the instructions she’d been given last night.  “If you turn it on and call the number on it, they’ll start recording.”

“Who?”

“Friends,” Lily said.  “I think.  People who want to get us out of here and shut this place down.”  It was a good idea, Lily thought.  Tammy was infinitely more of a talker than Mrs. Darling, she sensed.  And because she was newer to the neighborhood, she’d very likely be asking all the ‘right’ questions.  Might even get caught in the ‘my baby was a prostitute’ schtick.

Mrs. Darling, by comparison, was routinely committed in character.  An audio clip of her drunken ramblings would sound like most any housewife talking about an actual baby. Much easier to eavesdrop and get something juicy on Tammy.  

 

“HOW DARE YOU!”  Trinh’s Rebirther was loud enough to hear through the walls.  Uh-oh!  The inevitable had occurred.

“Quick! Hide it!” Lily ordered.  “Like I did!”  Trinh tucked the burner phone away underneath her right breast.  Hers were big enough that without a bra, it had a good chance of staying there; uncomfortable it might have been.

Mrs. Darling’s retort was too soft to hear from the nursery, save the word.  “FETISHIST!”

Trinh scrambled over to some toys. “Quick! Play with me!”

“What?”

 

 “YOU CALL THIS FAKE?!” That was Hurricane Tammy raging.

“BIG DEAL! WE’VE ALL GO THOSE! WHAT YOU DON’T HAVE IS A BABY!”  Mount Melissa was blowing her top, too.

 

“SHE’S! A! TODDLER!”

“Me, teacher.”  Trinh said.  “You, big baby.  I play with you like I play with them.”
 

Internally, Lily slapped her forehead.  Duh!  It would be seconds before the two women noticed that their prizes were missing, and they needed an alibi.  Trinh doing a bizarre form of babysitting was as good as any.

Lily sat with her legs splayed and put on her best ‘idiot face’, while Trinh broke into song.  Lily had no idea what the woman was saying other than guessing by the puppets and the different voices that it was a Vietnamese equivalent of Old Mac Donald.

The good thing about pretending to be a baby was that Lily didn’t have to know what was being said to her.  The fact that this time the nursery rhymes were actually in a language that she didn’t understand made it all the easier.

The ex-art history major felt her pulse ratched up into her ears by the time the nursery door opened and Melissa Darling walked in. 

Please let this work! Please let this work! Pleaselethiswork!

 

Funnily enough, it did. “Awwww,” Tammy said,  “Trinh just wanted to show Athena her stuffed animals.  Isn’t that sweet?”  Crazy monster bitch literally concocted the alibi for them.

Lily was so relieved that she didn’t even pay attention to the rest of the conversation the Rebirthers were having; as her pulse slowly climbed down out of her eardrums and back down the rest of her body.  Was there was such a thing as too relieved to hear properly?

The two not-quite Reborns were laid down and changed in front of each other: Trinh on her changing table, and Lily right there on the floor.  Lily sucked on her thumb, wiggling it around between the gap in her teeth to hide her nerves. 

Why was Trinh crossing her arms over her chest?  Did she want to draw attention to her boobs?  Did she want to get caught with a burner phone and doom them both?  Trinh’s own petulant discomfort, as well as the messiness of her diaper acted as a kind of distraction. 

Shit was literally EVERYWHERE

And for some reason, Mrs. Darling gave Trinh’s ‘Mommy’ a disposable diaper as if it were some kind of peace offering.  What the fuck had they been talking about?

A few moments later, both were changed and left under the watchful eye of their wardens.  A lot had more than just their diapers had changed, however. 

“They could almost be sisters,” Mrs. Darling said.

“Yes,” Tammy agreed.  “Yes they could.”

 

Bitches had no idea how right they were.

 

[D503]

Reverse braces!

Geez I hope they can bust outta this.

[Personalias]

An Interlude: How The Best Intentions Lead Straight To Hell In 3 Easy Steps

I. 

“Holy shit!” Charlie exclaimed that night. 

When Daphne’s low rent bug-phone called in, he hadn’t known what to expect.  Lots of cooing and bullshit babytalk; psychos playing house with brain damaged idiots.  It’s what he’d gotten every time he’d tried to listen in on any of the adult conversations.

These people were so committed to their own bullshit that they were positively boring.  Real parents were less obsessed with their own little bags of puke and shit. They were more like crazy cat ladies than actual adults with crotch fruit. 

Previous weird ass cults he’d busted up were more interesting than the drivel he’d listened in on  the last couple of days.  Diaper brands.  Feeding schedules.  Playdates that were excuses to drink themselves stupid. Such a waste, Charlie didn’t need an excuse to drink himself stupid, and if he did he at least had the decency not to kill braincells in front of people who legitmately didn’t have the braincells to take care of themselves.

At the park the other day, he’d seen two of these poor bastards give themselves concussions when one was crawling up a slide while another was going down headfirst.  That kind of behavior made a lot more sense after Daphne had scoped out the community daycare from the inside.

He’d sighed to himself when he picked up the phone and hit record.  This was going to be the worst combination of weird AND boring, he knew.  At least that dinosaur sex cult a few years ago had a surprising knowledge of Kaiju films.  Their belief that they could inject themselves with bird and lizard DNA and then make velociraptor orgy babies was nothing if not interesting.

This cult?  A bunch of men and women, mostly women, who couldn’t have kids and no one would adopt out to.  So they proved everyone’s point by kidnapping, brainwashing, and apparently chemically lobotomizing folks.  Yeah.  Great point there.

Now that he was hearing the recording, though, he was blown away.  This?  This was shit he could use!  He broke out his laptop an hour ago and furiously started typing away as two women- the one he’d met on that stroller walk and one whose voice he vaguely recognized bagged and gossiped away at intimate details of their friends and neighbors.  All while planning another big baby shindig to make themselves look good.

Charlie heard a crinkle creep up behind him.  “Hey, baby girl.” A shit eating grin spread over Charlie’s fat mug.

“Fuck you,” Daphne said. Her tone was casual.  A friendly ‘fuck you’ was about as nice as Daphne got some days. 

“You’re the one wearing a diaper,” he teased.

“We’re under deep cover,” Daphne said with a huff.  “What if we get unexpected company or a visit from the neighbors?  You’ll thank me when I don’t have my panties on.”

 

“I always like it when you don’t have your panties on.”  He got a smack upside the back of his head.  He giggled despite the pain.  She’d pulled her hit, but not much.

“You want me to change you?”  Charlie couldn’t help it.  He had to press his luck.  “As long as we’re going for authenticity, maybe you should stop going on the commode.  Wouldn’t want the neighbors to go through the garbage and find a dearth of diapers, would we?”

“Fuck you.”  It was less playful.  Less...but still playful.  Charlie would never say it, but he thought Daphne got off on all these weird outfits he always found a way to put her in.  He’d caught a quick peek at a certain dinosaur costume when he’d gone to her apartment just before this job.  Maybe after this one he’d find a stack of plastic backed padding and some baby powder in her underwear drawer after this.  “What do we got?”

 

Charlie went into business mode.  “That mole you recruited; without consulting me first,” he added, “hit some serious pay dirt.  I’ve got names of thirteen different cultists, who their gimps are-”

“Reborns” Daphne corrected him.  “They’re called  Reborns.”

 

“Right,” Charlie said. He hated using cult terminology when cultists weren’t listening in or when he wasn’t explaining lingo to grieving family members. “Who their Reborns are, and some minor differences in practices from cell to cell.”

His partner crinkled up beside him, getting a better view of the laptop. “Like what?”

“Like how the Florida cell meets their victims before they fuck ‘em up.  Sweet talks to them so they want to go willingly.  Literal child grooming.”  He paused a second.  “Okay, maybe not literal...but you know what I mean.” They both already knew that.  Daphne did not seem impressed.  “The Alaska cell?  Straight up kidnaps people it sounds like.   Good old fashioned human trafficking.  International human trafficking too.  If there even is a contract it’s signed under duress.”

Daphne cocked her head to the side. It wasn’t relevant to the investigation, but she looked kind of hot with her hair up in pigtails.   “How’s that help us?” she asked.  “Our lead witness; our only witness is a U.S. citizen and signed the contract not under duress.”  Daphne had done her own digging. “Nobody else is capable of testimony.  Some might even show up as different DNA if not different fingerprints.  This is so fucked up!”

Charlie hated to say it but he agreed to it.  He touched his finger to his nose.  BINGO.

“I’ve had a look at that contract  myself,” he said. “It’s got more legalese and misleading language than a politician’s election PAC. I’ve had Google Updates with clearer terms than this.”  Wearily, he shook his head. This looked bad.  This looked really bad.  “I’m calling in a few of my lawyer friends and running this by them.  Maybe there’s something we’re missing, some kind of loophole, but I doubt it.  This thing is more confusing and demanding than a fucking Sea Org contract.”

Charlie’s ex crossed her arms and shifted her weight. “Our initial extraction target is functionally a four month old,” she said.  “We’ve got one witness to corroborate our story, but she can’t even walk anymore, and this place has private security on par with a drug cartel.  What do we do?”

Charlie bowed his head.  “We might have to bail.  Pass it on down the line.”  He set his jaw.  “This might just be above our pay grade.   Settle for the half we got paid.”  He turned the recording into a digital format and sent it through to his contact; the true bankroller and intel baron who’d contacted him.  “We’ll see what our client has to say.”



II. 

Jack sat in the Revenge Room, staring at his screens.  He felt fine. He hadn’t showered in days and if he hadn’t gotten so used to the gradual increase in body odor he might have realized just how much he reeked.  He felt fine. 

 

 He hadn’t slept in what felt like a short eternity; not properly anyways.  He’d briefly nod off and lose consciousness in his seat, but never for longer than an hour or so.  He checked the time everytime his eyes popped back open long enough to realize that they’d been closed.  He felt fine.

His stomach rumbled.  He wasn’t sure if it was because he needed to void or because he was hungry. For close to a week he’d been subsisting on fast food deliveries, beef jerky, Red Bull, and the occasional bottled water, just in case.  The only time he left the Revenge Room was to pick up the food (after the delivery driver had left it on his doorstep), or on rare occasions to change his diaper.   He felt fine.

Oh yeah.  He was wearing a diaper now.  The idea had come upon him like a stroke of genius.  He wore a medical brand diaper; top of the line; not like one of those cutesy costume monstrosities that the Rebirthers were wearing.  Jack’s was very comfortable. Magnificent odor control (as far as he could tell).  Literally super absorbent but in a way that felt manageable.    Much more efficient than leaving the Revenge Room for something so trivial as a bathroom break.  His vigilance and productivity had at least tripped since he cut out bathroom breaks. He felt fine.

He was wet, he could tell, but he wasn’t sure how wet.  All the energy drinks and water he’d been guzzling had turned him into a fountain down below.  He constantly had to pee, and since there was no point in holding it in, he constantly did pee.  He felt fine.

Melissa’s ex-husband still was having trouble telling whether the rumbling in his gut was due to not having put enough food in his body or whether the food was about to make a painful exit.  It kind of all blended together.  Solution was simple enough.  If he shat himself within the next forty-five minutes, he’d change himself on the hour.  If the hour struck and he was still in pain, Jack would order Pizza. He felt fine.

He’d started practicing these perfectly reasonable, perfectly fine habits as soon as he’d gotten word that his Private Eye had breached the walls of the Rebirther’s Florida compound.  When that message had streamed in, Jack found himself increasingly unable and unwilling to leave.  He needed to be in the darkness.  He needed to check all of his contacts, all of his leads.  He needed to be vigilant and wait.  He needed to be ready.  At any given time, he might.get the news he was waiting for.

*PING*

Success!  Already hunched over this particular laptop like a gargoyle, Jack Darling ran a virus scan for the twelfth time that hour, practically drooling over the newest file.  He hadn’t heard anything in too long, and needed to be careful.  What if Jack had been captured?  Interrogated?  Broken?  Or worse, converted?

With quiet, shallow breaths, Jack waited for the virus scan to clear before opening the file and reading his man’s report.

He did not like what he read.

Not at first.

The people who went into the womb were more than brainwashed.  They were brain damaged, regressed down to a poor facsimile of infancy.  Yes.  Yes.  That made a sick kind of sense in a way;  Melissa WOULD like something a little more pliable.  Couldn’t deprogram that which was just smashed and a broken person and an undeveloped one weren’t all that dissimilar.  Horseshoes and handgrenades.  Close enough.  Mentally unfit people couldn’t testify though.

The primary target, Victoria Yang, was useless.  Poor thing was completely nonverbal and crib bound; a perpetual newborn.  That was a shame.  This operation covered it’s tracks.  Best to pull Plagent out of there, pay him the other half of the money anyways for his effort, information and silence.

Jack was already planning to destroy this laptop and buy a new one to contact some Mercenaries out of Venezuela.  It would ruin him, but Mercenaries would cross bridges that gumshoes wouldn’t. 

Unfortunately, he was having a hard time reading the rest of the briefing.  His eyes stung from staring at computer screens, and the words started to blend and warp together into nonsense scribbles.  More Red Bull needed.  Semi-deleriously, Jack scrolled down to the attachment at the bottom.

“An audio file?”  he opened it.

He opened it and wept maddened, crazed tears.  Tears of joy.  Tears of hatred.  The tears of a lover hearing a ghost.  The tears of a child opening their present on Christmas Eve only find they’d gotten exactly what they’d wanted.  

 

He knew the voice of one of the women talking.  He’d never forget that voice.  It haunted him in his dreams.  Jack knew what needed to be done.  It needed to happen.  Justice. Karma. Vengeance  Right now he was listening to Melissa gab to some other woman about the most pointless bullshit. She always was a tremendous gossip. 

Soon enough, he’d hear her anguished screams in his sleep.  Or at least he’d be able to properly imagine them.

He was fine.  Better than fine.

III.

BING!

The reply came not-quite five minutes later.  A record for this particular contact.  Daphne narrowed her eyes at the screen, as if she’d be able to see into the computer’s binary soul.  Fast reply  Too fast.  “What’s it say?” she asked.

“Hold your Huggies,” Jack waved her off.  She gave him another smack upside his head.  She was not getting paid enough to put up with Charlie’s bullshit, (and she was getting paid a lot).
Charlie made no further comment.  He just read. “J.M.B. says that he wants us to take the Darling’s kid.”

Daphne huffed and then chuckled.  “Great.  So do what we were probably going to do anyways.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said.  “Except…”  Fuck.  Daphne had heard this tone before.

“Except what?”

“How are we gonna get her out?”  It was the question that Daphne still didn’t have a good answer to.  “Security was still pretty tight at this place.  She can’t walk.  The moment she disappears alarms are going off, and we only have so much time before someone figures out that you’re not a literal Adult baby.  We don’t have time to develop enough trust to babysit or some other scam.”

“The girl’s smart,” Daphne said, urging Charlie to have something resembling balls.  “And she’s managed to pass herself off for a while now.  These people aren’t THAT bright.  They see what they want to see.”

“Even if we get her out,” Charlie argued,  “it’s not like it’s gonna rescue all these other people.  Barring a legal miracle, it looks like these assholes actually found a way to work around the thirteenth amendment.”

Daphne felt her blood began to heat up. “Common sense says is all bullshit!”

 

Charlie took a sip of something dark and brown from his mug.  “Since when does common sense and the law ever do anything?  We save the wrong person and our asses go to prison.”

Daphne stared down at Charlie.  Charlie had already enough of whatever was in his mug to not be cowed. He was right, too.  This is why they typically did fringe cults and stayed away from the more established and organized crazies.  Scientology and even some of the Mormon Fundies just had too much pull to make it worth the risk.

DING!

“Huh?”  Daphne reached over Charlie and opened the second email from J.M.B.  They read the follow up missive together.

Charlie almost spit out his coffee. “He’s willing to pay us THAT MUCH MORE for Darling’s kid?”

Their disbelief was short lived and then compounded.

BEE-DEE-DEEP! BEE-DEE-DEEP!

“Shit!”  Daphne jumped back as the burner phone rang again. “Twice in one night?”  She looked at the time.  “Our girl’s up late!”

Jack touched his nose and then mimed zipping his lip. He was right.  It might be not be their girl.  Lily was clever to be sure, but there was a very real possibility that she’d been caught and compromised.  Someone might have seen the naughty Reborn playing with a phone and bluetooth and wondered where she got it. 

Daphne turned their end on, but did not say anything.  Half a second after answering, the phone was muted.  Charlie was already eyeing their bug out bag, in case anyone but a young asian girl spoke directly into the receiver.

“Xin chào?” the voice said.  It was definitely a young woman by the sound of it.  And the language sounded Asian.

“I thought you said she spoke English?”

“She does.” Daphne had nothing else she could add.  She’d spent the day to herself researching the life and times of one, Lily Chen.  Girl wasn’t bilingual as far as she knew.  The voice didn’t sound like Lily’s either.

“Có ai ở đó không?”  The voice was just above a whisper.  This wasn’t Lily, but just like Lily this was someone who knew they were being baby monitored and not someone who was just starting to come back to sentience so a needle could take it away.  “Nếu bạn có thể nghe thấy tôi, hãy nói điều gì đó.”

Daphne started the recording program on the computer, and turned the speaker’s volume up.

“Xin vui lòng!”

Charlie pouted his lip out.  “What language is that?  Chinese?  Japanese?”

“I don’t know,” Daphne said. Her heart skipped a beat while the gears in her head started to whir.  “But that’s not braindead babble!  That’s language!”  She remembered the audio recording Charlie had just sent his contact.  “That’s Trinh! That’s gotta be!”

“Lily đưa cho tôi chiếc điện thoại này.”

Daphne’s ex was just a step behind, but still quick enough on the uptake.  “The one that that cultist kept talking about as a toddler!  Wussername?  Tammy! That’s it.”
 

Cô ấy hiểu tiếng Anh! Tôi không thể làm cho mình dễ hiểu hơn trong trường hợp cô ấy đang nghe.

A fire lit underneath Daphne’s soul, raising her spirits.  “She’s still got her mind!”

“And she’s from the Alaska compound!”  Charlie grinned.

“Meaning no contract legally signing her life away!”

 

“AND she’s just one translator away from a full deposition!”

Daphne thought back to the park where all the other Reborns had been congregating.  There HAD been an Asian girl wobbling around on modified shoes and throwing tantrums as she’d been restrained.  It was one of the things that had misinformed the pair into thinking the baby schtick was an act for everyone else.  “She’s mobile, too.  Less of a physical liability.”

“Làm ơn đưa tôi ra khỏi đây.”
 

“Did you see her at the daycare?”  Charlie asked.

“I don’t think so…” Daphne said. “Meaning fewer people might recognize her.”

“Tôi muốn gặp lại các con tôi!”

Charlie hung up the phone, turned it off and removed the SIM card.  They’d heard more than enough.  And both of them were thinking the same thing.

“Y’know,” Charlie said.  “Our contact doesn’t know the name of Darling’s daughter…”

“And” Daphne added, “Trinh can act as proof that real laws have been broken.”

“Plus if this Lily is as smart as you say she is, she can probably last long enough…”

“Might take a while,” Daphne thought.  Then she looked at the amount being offered.  “But she could make it.  Even if it does take another year or two with all the red tape that’ll be thrown at us.”

Charlie laughed. “Remember the sex dinosaur cult?  It shouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the feds to raid!”  Something in him sobered up.  “We still might need her help to pull this off. That’s gonna be a hard sell.”

“Good thing we’ve got a playdate tomorrow,” Daphne said.

[Babypants]

Really good chapter.  Great pace.

[ABAlex]

Only read the first few parts but loving it so far. I think your use of her internal dialogue is very effective. Also, I think the idea of her playing incontinent to avoid attention is funny, as it effectively means the same thing from her captors point of view, and I could see them even knowing thats her mindset and pretending not to notice. I could even later see them teasing her about it as if its an "excuse."

On a random note, I like the mention of the different types of irl abdl diapers, like her wondering if they are simples or bianacas. For a long time any abdl story would basically have imaginary diapers in them, its fun to see real brands mentioned.

[Personalias]

Chapter 19: No Good Deed...

If Lily had any significant control of her bladder and bowels she would have shit herself in outrage and anger right there.  As it stood, she was just wet.  “What do you mean you’re taking Trinh?!” she asked Daphne.

Daphne put a finger to her lips.  “Shhh,” she whispered to Lily.  “Do you want to throw any hope of success down the toilet?”  Toilet.  A poor choice of euphemism to ensure compliance.  The pair had already switched Lily’s baby monitor off, and Charlie was doing his level best to distract (a phrase here which means get drunk with) Mrs. Darling, but anything spoken in actual language could still be heard by prying ears if said too loudly.

The proceeding exchange was done in near silent whispers, drowned out as the two pushed around toy cars that made jingle jangle sounds and shook overlarge rattles; throwing in some childish giggles for good measure.   It’d have been comical, something out of a Cohen Brothers movie if not for the fact that Lily was having her hope torn apart thrown into the air like confetti.

“I got you that information,”  Lily insisted.  “I got you that proof.”  She was in denial.

“Trinh got us that proof.”  Daphne said, flatly.  “She got her Mommy AND yours gabbing about the way this place works.”

Denial shifted to anger.  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have any leads.  You’d still be trying to rescue Victoria Yang.  You’d have been caught the second it was time to change you.”

Daphne did a kind of shrug, something that looked strange considering she was on all fours.  “Probably not.  Cults are a lot like political parties.  People see what they want to see until they have no other choice; sometimes even after.  As long as I didn’t talk in full sentences, I’d have gone unnoticed.”  It was intimidating, the way she was able to just lay out the bare truth.

“But…”

The diapered detective didn’t let Lily finish.  “It’s not a big secret that Trinh is ‘different’ from the other Reborns.  We would’ve found out eventually.  Even if we didn’t, our timetable is slim.  Worst case scenario I would have bailed and we would have never met anyways.” It hurt the way Daphne said “I” instead of “we”.  Yes, her Daddy was in on the act, but in using the singular pronoun there was no doubt that Lily would not be included in the escape attempt.

Anger caved into bargaining. “Yeah, but this place has crazy reach.  Like you said, everybody knows Trinh isn’t really a baby.  You take her, and they can send out a call looking for you and a normal Asian lady; guns blazing.  Take me, and they’ll be looking for a mentally disabled person.  Anybody who sees me speaking in full sentences will write me off.”

Daphne didn’t so much as blink.  “Lotta assumptions there, lady.” It was meant to give Lily some comfort, being called ‘lady” instead of ‘kid’.  It didn’t, though.  “They might just put your pic out there.  And you don’t know that they’re gonna want you taken alive.  Their secrecy is more important than one baby.  They might just shoot first and ask questions later.”  In the corner of her mind, Lily imagined she heard the pops of gunshots over the tinny jingle jangle of baby toys.  “Yeah, your Mommy will be heartbroken and cry.  And she’s a social butterfly, but she’s not THAT high ranking in the big scheme of things.  We go on the run, we need somebody who can actually run.”

It wasn’t fair!  It just wasn’t fair!  She was being given a terminal diagnosis, and she couldn’t even scream about it lest the cancer spread faster!  She was right about it though.  Lily didn’t like it, but she had to admit that the other woman had a point.

Like a stake through Lily’s heart, Daphne drove the point home.  “We’ve done some digging.  Legally, Lily doesn’t exist.  The legal forms you signed are binding.  We could do more harm than good.  Even if we got you away from here, that might just land us all in jail.  We’d be kidnapping you.”

“A judge wouldn’t hold that up.  Common sense says that this,” Lily’s arms motioned to the entire room., “is cruel and unusual and illegal.” 

“Common sense doesn’t hold up in court, honey. People in power have a way of ignoring the rules they’ve set up. Your friend though; that’s human trafficking and illegal immigration. We’ve got a better chance of getting this place investigated, raided, and liberated, if we go the Al Capone route and fuck this place up on a technicality.” 

Trinh was not Lily’s friend, Lily decided then and there.  Bitch was stealing her one and only chance at freedom...not that it was her fault.

Bargaining collapsed into full on depression.  “Why?  Why are you even telling me this?”  The tears were flowing now.  Lily couldn’t scream, but she could still cry.

Daphne caught those tears and wiped them away.  “Because we still need you to make this work. That big party Darling is planning?  We’re gonna need a distraction to get away and make good time.  We get away clean, we get the ball rolling, we come back for you.”

“How long will you be gone?” Lily asked.  Daphne didn’t answer right away.  “How long?”

For the first time, Daphne looked uncomfortable. “Depends on how long it takes….”

“How long?”
“Based on my experience? Could be a week or two. Could be a couple of months? Could be a year”

A year? A whole fucking year?  Lily couldn’t make it another year.  She couldn’t endure another year of cribs and breast feeding and diapers and frilly fuckin’ dresses and cartoons and being talked to as if she had an IQ of three...of not hearing her own name.  Of being “Athena”.

.  Even without a booster shot, she’d go completely insane if this took another year.  She wouldn’t last half that long.

Lily popped her pacifier in her mouth, rolled over her back and shook rattle toys in both fists just to cover the muffled sound of her own panicked screaming.  Her body took that as a cue to void her bowels right into the seat of her plain white “simples”.  Her legs lifted up to her chest and the back of her formerly plain white diaper discolored and ballooned out.

“Fuck,” Daphne said just a little too loudly.  “Kid? Lily? Are you okay?” 

The poor girl didn’t even flinch when her legs lowered themselves back down and spread the mess more fully.  She just rolled over back to her hands and knees and let the rubber bulb drop from her mouth; a task harder than it appeared to most because it had a tendency of getting caught in the gap where her teeth used to be.

“No,” she said.  “I’m not.  But I’ll be fine.”  She started to crawl out of the nursery. 

“Where are you going?” Daphne hissed after her.

“To go get changed,” Lily said. “Mommy changes me when I’m stinky.  She’s dependable like that…”

The rest of the afternoon, Lily and Daphne pretend to play under “adult” supervision, while Charlie chatted Mrs. Darling up about plans for this little-big-get-together in the park.  Talks of a buffet table and an open bar, as well as public changing stations and games for both little ones and their parents.

Depression did not give way into a kind of grim acceptance. Not for Lilly.  Instead, even as they played peek-a-boo and feigned marvel at jack-in-the-box style toys, Lily let the gears in her head turn.
 

And in the darkest reaches of her soul, a mean spirited and spiteful voice hissed to her: “Looks like you’re not getting out of here after all, sugar-tits.  But if that’s not going to happen.  Why should this bitch get to leave?  

[Sarah Penguin]

[Personalias]

Chapter 20: ...goes unpunished

Later that week, but not much later, Lily crawled around the daycare.  Instead of lazing around and keeping a watchful eye on the self-harming brain damaged imbeciles, she crawled around pretending to be one. 

That wasn’t quite accurate: Lily was in no-way self-harming, but to anyone who might be observing her, “Athena” would seem to have a more restless energy, moving from toy to toy, playing with it for a handful of seconds before getting bored of it and tossing it aside.  The only real noticeable difference was she didn’t bother placing anything in her mouth and giving it a good chew.  “Athena” rarely if ever chewed, so no one who noticed would have thought.  Just “baby Athena” was a little less subdued than she normally was.  And that would have been fine.  Babies did that sort of thing.

One of the caretakers WOULD have noticed Lily behaving slightly differently, except they were too busy marveling over Trinh.  Just before the big shindig later today, she was being given a trial run at the daycare, and she was the life of the party. 

Why wouldn’t she be?  With the little secret not-so-secret and Trinh’s intelligence out in the open, she could get away with more than Lily could.    The caregivers were more eager to play with someone who really understood them; someone who could quickly learn baby games.

Instead of careful scrutiny, she was given praise when she pointed out that someone had shoved a tiny Lego up their nose or informed them (all through simple pointing and gestures) that another was close to leaking.  The caregivers were practically taking notes as she did the same puppet show she’d performed for Lily at their playdate.  The “real” babies seemed enchanted by it.

Trinh just looked happy to be interacting with people beyond being forcibly strapped down and force fed sake from a sippy cup.  And she’d be getting so much more freedom, if Daphne and Charlie had any say.  So much more freedom.  So much more adulthood.  She’d be getting everything that Lily had wanted, had craved, had needed, for more than a year.

And Lily would be left.  Alone again.  Cast back into the cave and chained up against the wall to stare at shadows after only spending a short time out in the sun.

Alone.

Not if Lily had anything to say about it.

Her sojourn around the playroom had two purposes.  One was to throw the daycare workers off her scent.  Literally.  She’d pooped again, but couldn’t afford to get changed.  Not until she found…
A rag doll.

Down at the bottom of a pile of stuffies, buried beneath plush puppies and monkeys, and bears, was the beaten and abused remains of a rag doll.  It wasn’t a ragdoll, in actuality, but an old baby doll that had been beaten and abused to death.  The thing was naked, it’s plastic arms, legs and head given way to an off white and unwashed cloth torso with the stuffing leaking out. 

Good.  Very good.

Now to double her odds of success.  She had to find another inmate in of need a change.  Preferably a girl. 

“Mikey…” she mouthed.  A lifetime ago, she might’ve thought the boy cute in a non-babyish sort of way.  The grunting and squatting posture his crawl had assumed wasn’t attractive, but it was exactly what Lily needed.  True, he wasn’t a girl, but this couldn’t be just as good if not better. 

Lily had hoped to get changed with a girl because girls took slightly longer to change.  Adults on diaper duty tried to be quicker with boys for fear of being squirted in the eye.  That and a care to avoid infections, made it so that they were just a little bit slower and more deliberate with the wipes.  Lily would need as much time as she could get for what she was planning.

Mikey was wearing shortalls, though. His diaper would be easy enough to change (as far as changing giant adult baby diapers went), but shortalls took longer to unbutton and refasten; harder to shimmy up and down hips than a onesie, and had to line up all the snaps correctly while the wearer giggled and writhed.  The worst aspects of all baby clothes; with the only advantage of it being that the wearer couldn’t accidentally kick them off like a pair of loose fitting shorts.

Lily quietly cursed herself for being able to analyze baby clothes on this level.  She had learned so many things about child care that she’d never thought she’d need.

Mikey’s lack of a vagina might yet benefit Lily, too.  “Come on, Mikey,” she whispered cooed, hoping the boy would follow him.  When he didn’t, she crawled in front of him shook her hips a little bit; hoping that something still lingered beneath Mikey’s brain damaged skull.  Even baby boys still liked pretty girls, or so she hoped.  Mikey played with himself enough during changes to suggest that.

The good news is, that for whatever reason, it worked.  Mikey let out a giggle, pawing at and then crawling for Lily’s padded butt.  The swish and crinkle of her diaper and sundress acted like a kind of cat toy.  The better news was that they didn’t have to wait long. 

Just like with Darling, it was a matter of going up to the right caregiver and then cuddling and nuzzling them as if she were a kitten.  “Athena” always got real cuddly when she needed a change.  It was a useful character quirk that Lily had developed almost as soon as the twisted physical therapy she’d undergone had given her her crawling back. .  It had saved her on many an occasion from wallowing in her own filth for too long.  Now, her careful manipulations and faux tells would be the key to getting her so much more agency than just getting her ass wiped on schedule.

“Hiiii Athena,” the caregiver said while Lily practically wove in and out of her legs.  She sniffed, leaned over and reached down to pull open the back of her Lily’s diaper.  “Yeah,” she chuckled. “I guessed as much.” 

Her diaper had just snapped back into place when the true Reborn got a serious case of Mikey-See-Mikey-Do, Mikey didn’t nuzzle at the grown-up’s knee as much as he started humping her leg.  Lily wondered briefly if MIkey was this much of a horndog prior to being stuffed in an artificial womb, or his three months of drugs and darkness had had this particular particular effect on him.  It didn’t matter.  It still served her purpose.

“What the?” the daycare worker said, gently prying herself off.  “Ew! Mikey! No! Bad baby!  We don’t do that anymore.”  She gave Lily a pat on the but, spreading the mush.  “Come on Athena.  Let’s go get you changed.”

A jolt of worry: “Athena” but not Mikey.  The lady leading her was walking slowly backwards, motioning for Lily to follow.  Time to act quickly. Lily grabbed the doll and crawled forward, like a good baby following directions.  When she passed Mikey, she visibly sniffed and wrinkled her nose.  Then she patted Mikey on the butt, feeling the lump beneath his shortalls.  It wasn’t hard to fake the disgusted frown; not faking at all.  The real trick was seeming confused about what it was.

“Oh?”  The daycare worker took a step forward and followed Lily’s lead.  She felt the same mass.  “Oh.  Mikey, you too!  Okay!  Come on!  Both of ya!” Her voice went to shrill peaks.  “Come on Mikey!  Come on Athena!  Let’s go get your diapees changed.  Thaaaat’s it!  Good babies!”

Lily made sure to lead the way, both because she didn’t want to be downwind, and because she wanted...needed to change first.  She had to knuckle crawl the whole way, to keep a decent hold of her worn out doll.  A real baby, a real Reborn would have become uncomfortable and left the doll stranded in the tiled hallway on the way to the changing room.  How fortunate that Lily wasn’t actually a Reborn.

“Let’s see,” the daycare worker said when they’d reached the changing room.  “Here’s Mikey’s diapers…” she set aside a mostly dark blue, almost indigo diaper with dinosaur prints.   “Aaaaaand…” the diaper she picked out was gaudy pink.  “Here’s one for Athena.”

Lily felt her heart catch in her throat.  The pink diaper was being put aside.  The blue one was being unfolded.  She couldn’t be changed last!  After changing was done, most of the staff did everything they could to get back out into the playroom.  That was good, but only if Lily could pull off this stunt and NOT be thoroughly examined after the fact.  She NEEDED to be changed first and then ignored!


She needed the time it would take to change Mikey to do her desperate deed.  That extra bit of time was vital.  Everything else had gone so wrong in her life up to this point, and she didn’t want to take any chances!

Lily rolled over to her seat and started bouncing on it.  “Hee-hee-hee!” she laughed and clapped her hands.  Inwardly, she prayed that the lady would take the hint.

Her prayer was answered.  A sign of recognition and then concern flashed across the woman’s face.  “Uh-oh,” she said.  “Can’t have that.  Girls shouldn’t play around in messy diapers, little lady.  You won’t like where it ends up.”  Lily clung to the doll and giggled neurotically as she was muscled up and laid on the adult changing table.

Good.  Very good.  Finally something was breaking her way.  She actually enjoyed this diaper change.  She’d long lost count of how many diapers she’d gone through.  But she counted anyway. 

One.

With this next act, she was taking back control of her life.  Her time as a baby was now officially numbered.

Her giggling was sincere as she was given a tummy raspberry.  But it came from sincere anticipation of what she was about to do.  She clung to her new/old dolly.  Squeezing it like a life vest.

Likewise, Mikey played his part.  Or played with his parts.  “Mikey! No! You naughty thing!  That’s not a toy!”

Good job, Mikey.  Thanks.  And sorry. 

Sentimentality aside, Lily wasted no further time as she quickly and quietly crawled over to the corner, where the supplies for the Neoborns were kept on a rolling cart.  Supplies like extra thick diapers, bottles of formula, and booster shots. 

Doom.  Doom for anyone that got pricked with these syringes filled with pure pink infancy.  Lily had seen it so many times.  These were bullets; lethal injections for all intents and purposes.  Like reaching into a fire, Lily overcame her fear by acting quickly and without thought, rather than hesitate and be caught or worse yet...prick herself. 

She pulled out two doses.  Not terribly big.  They might be used to deliver insulin in other circumstances.  Still, Lily couldn’t help but feel a slight thrill as she stuffed two doses inside her raggedy doll.  The inside of the head made a neat stopper; an unintended side effect. 

Would two be enough?  Lily had to hope so.  She’d never seen someone get stuck with one of these things who hadn’t already been forcibly acclimated to them in utero.  These things had a way of pushing people over the edge and finishing the job that the false pregnancy had started; sometimes overdosing them into permanent Neoborn status...little better than a vegetable.  But would two be enough to someone who’d never had this vile drug practically woven into their DNA?  How much was too much versus not enough?  For her plan to work.

Caution overtook her, and she stopped at two, going so far as to time closing the needle box with the clicking of the diaper pail being re-sealed.  “So much better, right Mikey?”

“Ag-ag-ag-ag!”  The caregiver took that as a yes, and finished diapering him and refastening his shortalls.

This is why Lily had needed to go first.  She dare not leave the doll unattended with Mikey.  Poor guy didn’t deserve to accidentally prick himself and turn into a baked potato.  He had it bad enough.  By the same token, Lily was infinitely more comfortable dragging the contraband filled doll around as she crawled, instead of holding it right under one of her captor’s noses.

The trip back to the nursery was just as long as the trip to, but it seemed much longer.  Lily spent the next two hours quietly playing with her dolly.  She mimicked feeding it and cradling it.  Babbling to it and cooing at it, like a proper little girl.  “Ma-ma.  Ma-ma! Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!”

It was likely a little too advanced for most of the people here at the daycare, but Daphne had been right: people saw what they wanted to see.  And what they wanted to see was a tame baby girl playing with her toy the way it had been intended.  They’d write off any and all discrepancies; possibly owing it to her copying the “more advanced toddler” who had been showing all the others how to play gently with their toys.

God bless Trinh.  Even when she didn’t know she was helping, she was helping.  All the while, Lily went through the steps of her new plan.

It was genius in its simplicity.  Late this afternoon, when everyone was assembled, and all the plans- Mrs. Darling’s, Tammy’s, Daphne’s- were being put into motion, Lily would use her cover to  stab Charlie with the booster shots. Daphne’s partner and so-called Daddy, would regress and be left helpless.  Maybe he’d get turned into a big (read: GIANT) baby, or maybe the cult would show its true colors and euthanize the fat lard.

Didn’t matter to Lily.

What did matter is Daphne would be left stranded.  A “baby” without her support system.  A secret left to keep.  And if Lily knew her Mommy well enough, Mrs. Darling would be all over the good publicity of adopting an unfortunate AND the prestige of having not one, but two Reborns.  She’d use Trinh’s status as “toddler” to keep her closest rival from scooping Daphne up at the very least.

Whether or not Daphne got re-adopted by Mrs. Darling or some other crazy rube didn’t matter.  She’d be stuck.  Just like Lily.  She’d need help.  Just like Lily.  She’d have no choice but to rely on her and Trinh both to escape.

Simplicity itself.

She didn’t feel guilty all just thinking about it.  But for some damn reason, she kept thinking of her dreams: You get to keep your marbles in this little slice-o-paradise.” Levi had promised  “And I get your soul.” 

A deal was a deal.  At least the devil in her dreams kept his part of the bargain.  She couldn’t say the same for Charlie and Daphne.

When Mrs. Darling came to pick her up, Lily had wet again, but the pink diaper still had a lot more to give. She wouldn’t be changed for a while, yet...

Nevertheless, Lily kept counting.

Two.

And as she was carried out, now with a favorite dolly that no one else wanted and “Athena” couldn’t bear to part with

[Sarah Penguin]

[D503]

Faustian!

[Personalias]

Chapter 21: A change of plans

(Meanwhile that same morning.)
 

“No no no!” Melissa screamed.  Correction. Real women never screamed; they just made themselves heard over the noise.  “The ballpit can’t go next to the buffet pavilion.  That’s a disaster waiting to happen!”  She rubbed her temples, and was loving every moment of this.

Melissa was well and truly in her element.  The community picnic welcoming the new arrivals was a timid little sockhop compared to this evening.  Tiki torches were already creating a natural perimeter and keeping the bugs away after the sun went down..

There was going to be a potluck buffet, (with plenty of ready made sandwiches added to the spread, just in case), snow cones, popcorn machines, and face painting as well as a slew of games and prizes that the little ones would adore.  In addition, there were tents erected strategically for parents to nurse and change their children (also far away from the food pavilion).

“So I was thinking,” Tammy said.  “Shaving cream sensory station over there, right next to the fishing for prizes game, since that’s also low maintenance.” 

“Good thinking,” Melissa smiled.  “Very practical.”  It was the highest compliment Melissa knew how to give to Tammy.  “Just make sure we have volunteers willing to refresh the rinse buckets from the shaving cream.”

Tammy had been surprisingly helpful, too.  It had been her idea to rent the kiddie carnival attractions.  Melissa hadn’t even known that there were so many companies out there willing to rent children’s attractions out to adults.  Melissa had still insisted they come and set up early, leave.  Community management had insisted they also all sign N.D.A.’s and be checked for weapons or surveillance recording devices. The people involved didn’t mind, thanks to the extra pay.

The additional money had been worth it.  Oddly enough, convincing Dr. Anguis and the board of directors to approve this on such short notice had been deceptively easy.  Almost like they’d been waiting for two enterprising Mommies to take the reins and lead.

Speaking of leadership, it might have been Tammy’s idea to rent the bouncy houses and slides and giant hamster balls, but it had been Melissa’s stroke of brilliance to have them manned by locals.  The sign up sheet had made the rounds and most everyone was bringing both a dish and taking an hour or so, manning a stand or game or ride.

How heavenly!  A carnival without the carnies!  The picnic get together had been just a bunch of drunks hanging around while their children played.  This time, everyone was working together for the benefit of their children and themselves.  One of the hard and fast rules this evening would be there would be absolutely no alcohol this time around.  Couldn’t run the whack a mole game if you couldn’t see straight.

  And since children didn’t want to wait while their parents worked, that meant people were already talking to each other to find others to watch their little ones.  That meant more friendships.  That meant more playdates for the kids outside of daycare.  That meant cooperation instead of posturing among the adults.

All of this was possible, nay, inevitable, because Melissa had been able to check her ambition just enough to lift someone else up onto the dais next to her.


This would be the event of the season!

And it would be….just not for the reasons Clarissa would hope for....
 
*************************************************************************************************
(A little later)

“So we wait till just after sunset.” Charlie said.  “Then we have Lily create a scene and we bugger off with our immigrant friend. From there we get to the safehouse, work on debriefing, deprogramming, and contacting the feds with our proof.”  He thought for a second and then added, “Our first round of proof.  Trinh will be the blood in the water to get the sharks to start swimming.  What do you think?”

Daphne didn’t say anything.  She just kept stacking blocks on the carpet, her lips moving, but not saying anything.  A scowl darkened the detective’s face, looking at his partner.  Daphne had been getting more and more “in character” since roping in Lily.  “Hey Daph? Did you hear me?”

His ex looked up.  The little pawprints on her diaper had disappeared.  That meant she was wet.  “Huh?  Yeah.  Lily creates a ruckus, and then we ride off into the sunset.”  She added.  “I already did some work and touched bases with one of our guys.  Just before we cross state lines, we’ve got a new car waiting for us and a tow truck ready to junk the one we get away with.”  She looked down between her legs and patted the wet padding, poking and prodding.

Charlie nodded, approvingly.  “I’ve told our employer we’re making our move.  We’ll get the money, and he won’t even know or care about the difference.  We get paid.  We actually help some people.  We bring down a bunch of sick fucks.  Win-win all around.”  Daphne was still poking at her diaper in between rounds of block stacking.  “What’s got you?  Found a new kink?”

 

Daphne shifted over to all fours.  “Not exactly.”

“What is it?” Charlie asked, trying not to roll his eyes. “Exactly?”

“Just trying to figure out what it would be like.  To be like this.  To be stuck.”  Oh fuck.  Daphne was getting philosophical.  “To be treated like you were less than even a preschooler for over a year and have no end in sight.  How crazy would that make someone?”

Charlie grabbed his mug and took a sip.  Damn. Not enough whiskey, too much ice.  “Pretty crazy, I’d say.  We’ll have to ask Trinh when we’re in the clear.  Maybe around breakfast tomorrow.”

“I meant…” Daphne said, her teeth clenched. “Lily.”

“Are you shitting yourself?” Charlie asked.  “Holy crap. You’re shitting yourself, aren’t you?”

“I”m just...hrnn...working on my...hrnn...empathy.”

Charlie was visibly disgusted.  “I know you’ve got a guilty conscience over leaving that kid behind.  But we’ll get her out...eventually.”

Speaking of getting out… “Eventually...can be...a long tiiiime.”  Daphne’s face became rose blossoms.  She’d pooped herself and was only now regretting it.  “Imagine having to endure so much of it.”  She went to sit down and stopped herself, thinking better of it.  “Imagine knowing you’re gonna have to go through even more.”

Charlie bit his lip.  “Toldja you shouldn’t have told her the truth.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Daphne said.  “Strategically, I mean.  If we lied to her-”

“She might decide right then would be a good time to throw us under the bus,” Charlie groaned.   “Tell people about us and ruin our headstart.  I know.  I know.”  He was furious when Daphne told him that’s how she broke the news.  That girl didn’t need the truth, she needed a placebo.  Still, Daphne was good at reading people.

If she thought Lily would hold up better hoping for them to come back for her, she was probably right.

“Change me.” Daphne said.

“What?”

“I want you to change me.”

Charlie felt his nose wrinkle up.  “No, gross. Do it yourself.”

Instead Daphne crawled up to him and started nuzzling his leg like a kitten.  Where had she learned that trick from?  “Pleeeease,” she purred.  “I need this.  I need to get a better idea of what we’re leaving Lily stuck in.”

“Didn’t you already get this done to you at the daycare?”

“It’s not the same.”

Charlie sighed and stood up.  “Fine.” If it would get them through this gig with a clearer conscience, he’d wipe her ass for her.

*********************************************************************
(Even later)

Lily wasn’t drunk.  Not even a little.  Not even buzzed.  She’d just finished being breast fed and the most she felt was the need to be burped a little bit.  Mrs. Darling had been abstaining long enough over the last several days so that there wasn’t enough alcohol in her breastmilk to do anything to Lily besides make her a little gassy. 

A shame, really.  Lily could have used that extra bit of liquid courage just then.  Shit, was she now a functional alcoholic?  That was a sad and unintentional side effect of this year of hell, but it had been over a year since she’d gone through an entire day completely sober. 

Yikes…

But she didn’t want to be sober.  Not for this.

“You’re going about it all wrong,” Lily told Daphne in hushed whispers.  She kept digging a hole in the sandbox and then knocking over the resulting pile so she could dig another hole with her tiny plastic shovel.  “I shouldn’t be the distraction.”

Daphne pointed to the coloring book she’d be scribbling on.  Clever camouflage for not passing, but Lily wasn’t using it.  Even scribbled over handwriting could be identified if the scribblers weren’t fast or careful enough.  Babies and reborns couldn’t write.  Meanwhile, baby babble could be misheard as “words” all the time.  The less recording the better. 

“Bullshit,” Charlie growled, his mouth moving less than a ventriloquist’s.  “You’ve got these people wrapped around your finger.  They’ll never suspect you.”

The carnival was about twenty minutes from starting.  Rebirthers and their adopted prisoners were already starting to man the different rides and booths.  The crazies who had spouses left their adult-children behind, so that last looks could be applied to cutesy baby outfits.  Single parents made connections.  Charlie had offered to “babysit Athena” so that Mrs. Darling could Queen Bee it up and make sure everything was primed to go.

It gave the three conspirators a chance to do last minute planning of their own.  The playground had remained intact and unaltered despite all the other added glitz and glamour added to the little park.  It was being used as a kind of a quiet cool down area from all of the hustle and bustle going on; away from the moan of electric generators. 

Thanks to all of the background noise, and the usual (though surprisingly sober) amount of preoccupation from this twisted community, it was comparatively easy for the three to talk, so long as they kept their voices down and pantomimed the norm.

“They’ll suspect me when you’re gone,” Lily said.  “I almost never cry.”

YOU’RE A BABY  Daphne wrote on the alphabet activity page. That got her death glares from the other co-conspirators. 

She sighed and crumpled it up, speaking out loud when it was obvious the other two wouldn’t play along.  “Babies cry.  Babies do weird stuff all the time.”

Lily puffed air out of her cheeks in exasperation.  “Yeah, but how would you two know to take Trinh when I started crying?  Real babies can’t be predicted to make a scene like you’re asking.  You’ll be outed almost as soon as you’re gone.  Me?” She paused. “Do you want me to get boostered?”  It took everything Lily had not to stare at the doll she’d brought.  Filled with syringes of booster shot, it was her secret weapon. 

“How is Trinh supposed to get away without me and Charlie?” Daphne asked.  “Those shoes she’s always wearing-”

“Make it impossible to walk, I know.”  It was true.  The convex curve in the souls made it so that if the girl did anything more than a toddle, she’d fall flat on her face.  “Let me help take them off.” The pair didn’t say anything.  They didn’t have to.  “What, you guys don’t have a knife or something?”

“How?” Charlie muttered under his breath.  “How’s that better?”

Lily playtackled Daphne and giggled, loudly.  An excuse to get in close.  Charlie was hip enough to it to lean over to make the huddle seem like he was trying to tickle the girls before gently separating them.  Oh, she would love to have the syringes now.  To stick the fat man and send his world tumbling down into pastel pink darkness.  At this range, even with the element of surprise, Daphne could probably choke the life out of her. 

“Trinh doesn’t know you’re taking her,” Lily guessed. She got no reply.  She was right. “She’s watched more closely.  You need the surprise factor to snatch her up and get away.”  Daphne giggled and drooled and rolled in the sand a little more.  Charlie’s fake chuckles confirmed as much. “But she knows me.  She trusts me.  Let me tell her.  Let me cut off her footwear.”

They broke the hug, but not the huddle.  Charlie was still able to lean in close by brushing the sand off of their pretty dresses.  “Still haven’t answered the question. How?”

“Ballpit,” Lily said. “This place is four corners.  I use the cover of the balls to tell her where to run, and cut off her shoes. She runs out one corner.  Daphne makes the distraction on the other corner.  Can be simple as being lost.  You be the newbie Daddy at another corner for not paying attention.”

Daphne finished connecting the dots.  “Then Daddy comes and whisks me away pretending to be super embarrassed and we get Trinh out of here at a rendezvous.”

The fat man finished the thought.  “Knife and shoes stay in the ballpit.  Everybody assumes Trinh did it herself.  They’ll know we faked it, but we’ll be in the wind by then. That’s actually a really good plan, kid.”

Lily didn’t blush.  She didn’t need to.  She knew it was a good plan.  More importantly, tt least half of what she was proposing was a lie.  Trinh would be in the ballpit.  The two interlopers would be on opposite sides of the staging area.  Lily, however, would not be freeing Trinh.  She’d be getting her revenge.

The babified young woman reached to the edge and grabbed her dolly.  One more thing to do. “If you have anything, give it now. I’ll put it in my dolly.”  She cuddled the thing, careful and afraid that the concealed syringes within might break or spill their contents some how. 

Charlie narrowed his eyes.  Was that suspicion?  Did he know?  “Never seen that doll before. You had this pitch planned for a hot minute, haven’t you?” he asked.

She hid her guilt and her fear behind the doll.  “I’ve had a long time to get used to thinking to myself.  A long time.”  Time to add a little truth to make the lie more palatable.  “And I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it’d get me out of here.”  That part was true.  The only lie was what “this” would be. 

That sealed the deal.  With deceptive dexterity, Charlie palmed both the switchblade into Lily’s hands.  With one harmless white lie, she’d managed to con the professional con artist.  Before zipping the doll back up, she snuck the crumpled piece of paper too. 

When things got dark enough, she’d crawl up, unnoticed by virtue of her status, and topple Charlie. It would be poetic irony if the last thing he ever read was his girlfriend’s handwriting saying YOU’RE A BABY. Daphne would then have no choice but to escape with the only two allies she had available.

“There’s my girl!” A far too familiar voice broke in on Lily’s plotting.  Mrs. Darling was now standing in front of the sandbox.  “Thank you for watching her,” she said to Charlie.  “I hope she wasn’t any trouble.”

Mrs. Darling did her usual flex of dead lifting Lily up off the ground and onto her hip.  Charlie still seemed impressive.  Lily was almost too angry to take notice of the usual bum check and back pat that followed.

“No ma’am.  Your little Athena was a perfect angel.”  No one saw the scowl on Lily’s face.  Not perfect enough to take with her away from this hell.  “Maybe we could arrange another playdate in a couple of days?  This time, I’ll host.” 

Smooth.  Make plans for next week so they don’t expect you leaving tonight.  None of them would be leaving, though.  Not without Lily. 

“That would be lovely.  I’m always happy for Athena to make new little friends.”

That was when a sneeze changed the course of Lily’s destiny.  “Oh sure.  We’d love to watch her later tonight, to, if you need a bathroom break or something.  Daphne would love to haa-AAAAAaachew!”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Darling said. “You’re not getting sick are you?”

Charlie reached into the diaper bag he brought for Daphne and scrubbed his nose on a baby wipe.  “Oof.  No.  No idea where that came from.  I think I was just stuffed up and my schnoz hit the ol’ eject button.”

“Okay, good.” the so-called-Mommy replied.  “Watching kids is hard work.”  Lily had no eyeroll reflex by this point.  “If one of Athena’s little friends got sick, they stay at home.  And I wouldn’t want to overburden you, with

If one of Athena’s little friends got sick…

They’d have to stay home...

Inspiration hit just then.  Most people think of inspiration as a lightbulb, a spreading luminescence coming from your brain and lighting up your whole perspective.  This was more of a darkening.  A festering cancer reaching critical mass. 

It was the clarity of an alcoholic hitting rock bottom, mixed with a P.O.W. desperation for liberation.  Getting rid of Charlie would not get Lily out of the cradle any sooner. It’d only punish Daphne and drag her down with Lily. 

Her problem wasn’t that Charlie and Daphne refused to rescue her.  Her problem was that they’d chosen to rescue Trinh instead.

Brave, innocent Trinh.  Trinh who had suffered so much herself.  Who had people; children waiting for her in a country far far away.  A country where she was kidnapped from instead of swindled.  Lily didn’t deserve this treatment, but she’d walked into the trap.  Trinh had just been straight up snatched.  She deserved it even less. 

There was a kind of heat coming from the doll Lily had snagged; a heat of conscience.

Those nightmares…

She’d get to keep herself, not lose her mind despite months of isolating darkness and drugs and over a year of gaslighting, forced infantilization, humiliation, and anxiety. 

But she’d lose her soul...

A deal was a deal...
******************************************************************************************************
(Too Late)

Trinh waded into the ballpit.  Her “Mommy” held her hand up the ramp, and smiled when she plopped down into the balls.  Was this going to be how she got out?  Her first step to escape?  She doubted it.

But Athena...no that wasn’t her name...Lily had wanted to meet her here.  The other girl, the ones the cultists didn’t know about, had signaled much with her eyes and subtle head movements; things the people running this observation always failed to notice. 

“Oh-ho! Looks like Athena’s already here!” Trinh’s captor said.  Trinh didn’t fully understand the words, per se, but she more than got the gist of it.  Her English had gotten very good over the last year or so.  But without the opportunity to practice it, she couldn’t truly call herself fluent.  She could understand way more than she could say and was constantly running one language through her brain to translate it into her native tongue.   “Play nice.”

She understood that part.  Had heard it enough times to have some automaticity with regards to translation.  She was about to be ignored. Three or four other big babies; real ones; waddled and tossed balls and splashed in the pit besides them.  The other sane girl popped her head up out of the ballpit.  She’d been altered, surgically disabled so that the most she could do was crawl and hobble on her knees.  Trinh was lucky that way.

“Athena, where’s your Mommy?”  Tammy asked.  Lily turned her head at the sound of her “name”, but didn’t otherwise answer or show any sign of recognition.  Instead, her pumpkin headed grin lit up at seeing what was ostensibly her favorite playmate.  No one expected “Athena” to know where her Mommy was.


Tammy stepped away and stared adoringly, obsessively, at Trinh through the mesh perimeter. She wasn’t coming into the pit with Trinh, but Trinh wasn’t being strapped down or restrained like she so often was when not at home.  Thinking of her babyish faux nursery as “home” left a bad taste in the teacher’s mouth, but it had become a truth.

“Be careful, Trinh,” Tammy warned.  “Athena is just a baby.  You have to be gentle.”  Since everyone knew that Trinh could understand what was being said to her, she was allowed the luxury of rolling her eyes. Long immune to Trinh’s indignation, Tammy repeated herself.  “Where’s Athena’s Mommy?”  Trinh didn’t hear the follow up comment, but the way it was muttered made her think it was disparaging.  No petty rivalry died in less than a week.

What neither Trinh nor Tammy knew was that as far as Melissa Darling knew, Athena was being watched by her new friend Daphne and her Daddy, Charlie.  Charlie meanwhile, was setting up at another end and Daphne was preparing to make Rosemary’s Baby seem like a cherub.

Lily giggled and jerked her head towards the floor; burrowing more than diving into the plastic balls.  “Uh-oh!” Tammy called out.  “Looks like Athena is learning to swim!  Go after her, baby girl!’

Trinh did.  She dove in, hearing the cheers and laughter of her “Mommy” up above her as plastic globules rattled lightly with every shuffle and stroke.  It was loud.  Louder than even the crinkle in her new diaper.  (Wow these things were comfortable, but so LOUD, too.)

There, submerged in the rainbow spheres, Trinh realized the brilliance of the locale.  No one moved fast thigh deep in well..anything… so escape was unlikely.  It let the lazy adults let down their guard even more so.  The filled pit muffled all the other sounds- the shrieks, the cries, the giggles, and the machinery-while also obscuring lip movements and sounds to outside.  More incomprehensible baby babble to the uninitiated. 

This Lily really was a genius at subterfuge.  Perhaps this was a step to freedom then. A baby-step at least.

“Hey,” Lily said.  “I’m glad you’re here.”  Trinh’s English must not have been as good as she thought.  Lily didn’t seem terribly happy.  “I need to tell you something.”

“What?” Trinh asked.

“The people getting us out of here?”  Lily said. “They can only take one of us.”  Trinh’s face sank.  Was she going to be left here?  Alone?  With these crazy people?  “And they’ decided to take you.”  The teacher felt no relief.  No time to feel joy.  This other girl had told her that she was dying, being left behind, so that Trihn might live as herself again and be able to go home.  Home to her family.  Home to her children.  Home that wasn’t defined by wooden bars and humiliating outfits.

Trinh did the only thing she could think of.  The only humane thing.  The only right thing.  The only thing she could do.  “I’m so sorry,” she said.  Even lying sideways as they were, Trinh hugged the girl, this kindred spirit, this unfortunate soul as hard as she could. “I’m so...so...sorry.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”  The wail was so loud, that Trinh could hear it over the crowd, over the ballpit. Crying, but not just a Reborn’s nonsensical wailing.  It was a rumbling mumbling, followed by a crashing.

 

 She stuck her head up to see what was the matter. Something, or someone, was causing a scene. 

Overcome with worry and curiosity, Trinh followed Tammy and the other Rebirthers’ gaze to the far end of the carnival.

“I’m sorry…”  It was the second to last words in any language that Trinh would hear and understand.

 

A pin prick in her thigh.  Then another.  Trinh’s knees buckled back down, and she clattered into the balls.  Laughter and nonsensical giggling all around her. Babies.  Babies all around her, playing and laughing.  Just like her!

Euphoria!  Complete and total eyes roll in the back of your skull euphoria!    Her skin buzzed and tingled and glowed.  Her head felt silly.  This was like being drunk, but better.  What was drunk again? She felt squishy and wet, even if she was quickly losing the ability to describe those words or what they meant.  All she knew is she felt nice. Very nice.

Like slipping into a warm bath and dozing off, not caring if she drowned so long as she was nice and wet and warm.  Like everything about her that was her that was Trinh: Teacher, mother of two, kidnapping and human trafficking victim; all of that was leaking out of her and going into her diaper.

It was nice.

Words were leaving her.  Without them, sensations, and colors, and sights, and sounds and emotions were being turned up to eleven.  Why use words?  What good had they done?  She could just cry to get what she wanted- she didn’t have any other choice-but that would be so much better.

Words were hard.  But faces were imprinting.  The face of the woman who smiled at her and fed her and bathed her and dressed her in all of these comfy and pretty clothes.  She was important.  She was good.  These other people who looked and dressed and smelled like her.  They were good too. 

Everything was good.  And if it wasn’t, someone else would make it good.  And if they didn’t, she had all the tools she’d ever need to cry and wail and scream and make sad noises until it was made good.  And then she’d make happy noises.

Everything else went straight into the pulpy padding and would be thrown away with the next change.  And she wouldn’t understand why nice lady was crying either.  Or why other people were making so many unhappy noises.  She’d start making unhappy noises too, even if she didn’t know why.  Then she’d make more unhappy noises for real because she forgot that the sharp white things in her mouth hurt the soft mushy thing in her mouth….

And so on…

 

And so forth…

And down and down and down she went...


The last words she’d ever understand weren’t spoken out loud, but were in her head. They were the words of someone she’d never met, but they somehow sounded both happy and mean at the same time.

“Bye bye, big girl.” 

***************************************************************************************************
Twenty minutes later, the community was up in arms. The private server was practically on fire.  Some people weren’t even bothering to use coded language (or as uncoded as Rebirther lingo got).

First, Charlie and Daphne had been publicly shamed.  Her for having a shitfit of a temper tantrum and knocking over an entire table full of food while kicking and screaming for no discernible reason.  Him for not being around her to contain her.

That much had been according to plan.

What wasn’t going according to plan was Trinh.  They found her in the ballpit with two syringes sticking out of her leg and babbling, actually babbling.  No equilibrium.  Unable to walk.  Almost a vegetable.  Practically a Neoborn.  Someone had boostered her.  And hard.

Speculation was already going on as to whether she’d ever be able to crawl again.  Talking was pretty much out of the question.

More scandalous was the note that was pinned to her dress:  YOU’RE A BABY!  Written in crayon on a crumpled up coloring page and pinned with a switchblade knife.

There was an emergency town meeting being called, by Dr. Anguis himself,  to get to the bottom of who stole the booster shot and took Trinh’s “development” into their own hands so brazenly.

They weren’t saying it, but the smart money was on Melissa Darling. 

The two detectives knew better, though.

“Bitch turned on us.” Charlie said.  “That Lily bitch scammed us and hard.  Toldja we should have strung her along.”

Daphne was back in adult clothes, and rummaging through the duo’s bug out bags.  Guns.  Vests.  Masks.  Shit had hit the fan.  “So what do we do now?”

“We leave.”

“Not without her.” Daphne said.  “She’s a loose end that needs to be taken out.  Girl is unstable.  She’ll rat us out the second she gets a chance.”

“Unless…”  Charlie said.

“Unless what?”

[D503]

Great story. Gripping.

[herezulo]

Man, I hate that your writing makes me feel things and care about things. Every chapter of this leaves a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I can't and won't stop reading. This is just too good of a story, and you're too good of a writer!

[Babypants]

Having spent more than 40 years working both sides of the author/editor divide, I want to commend you for your work here.  This is solid fiction because, like almost all good fiction, it is character driven.  With all of its twists and turns, the plot works because you have taken the time to give your characters life stories in sufficient depth that their thoughts, words and actions are plausible.  Frankly, less than 10% of the stuff published here passes this test.  I am particularly impressed by the fact that you are using so many tricks of the trade ... Trinh gets a straightforward biographical dump, while Charlie is emerging through a series of asides.  His character reminds me of Darren McGavin's Kolchak, The Night Stalker (a 1970's TV series).  Have you seen this cult classic?

[Personalias]

On 7/5/2021 at 3:13 AM, D503 said:

Great story. Gripping.

Thank you.  What do you like about it?

 

On 7/5/2021 at 3:50 AM, herezulo said:

Man, I hate that your writing makes me feel things and care about things. Every chapter of this leaves a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I can't and won't stop reading. This is just too good of a story, and you're too good of a writer!

Thank you!  That's quite a compliment!

 

On 7/8/2021 at 10:33 AM, Babypants said:

Having spent more than 40 years working both sides of the author/editor divide, I want to commend you for your work here.  This is solid fiction because, like almost all good fiction, it is character driven.  With all of its twists and turns, the plot works because you have taken the time to give your characters life stories in sufficient depth that their thoughts, words and actions are plausible.  Frankly, less than 10% of the stuff published here passes this test.  I am particularly impressed by the fact that you are using so many tricks of the trade ... Trinh gets a straightforward biographical dump, while Charlie is emerging through a series of asides.  His character reminds me of Darren McGavin's Kolchak, The Night Stalker (a 1970's TV series).  Have you seen this cult classic?

I am largely self-taught as a writer and consider myself an attentive reader if not particularly well read. So when I do read I tend to read and re-read and see how better authors than myself write and I experiment and try and incorporate techniques into my own writing until they either become a part of my writing voice or at least a tool that I can pull out when I need it.

I'm not familiar with Kolchak.

Charlie, in particular, was largely influenced by Warren Ellis's book Crooked Little Vein, which has both absurdist shock value elements as well as a modern noir feel.   That's how it read to me over a decade ago when I read it, anyhow.

[Personalias]

Chapter 22: Listen!

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville

Searchin' for my long lost shaker of salt

Some people claim that there's a woman to blame

And I know, it’s my own damn fault.

 

 

Jimmy Buffet; “Margaritaville”

Melissa Darling woke up drunk.  This in of itself was nothing new.  She’d woken up drunk plenty of times since moving to this community.  Some days she honestly thought it a miracle that she’d woken up at all instead of choking on her own vomit.  Strange what being a spider’s thread away from rock bottom could do.  

 

In the back of her mind, she’d almost welcomed it tonight.  The event had been a complete disaster.  Literally.  It was supposed to be community building (with her on top) but the entire affair had been rocked by scandal and outright betrayal.  Tammy had gone home in tears (and a bizarre amount of sympathy) and now her daughter was an honest to god child.  Stupid bitch just couldn’t handle the responsibilities of actual motherhood, it seemed. 

Tammy’s wails has started to mix with Trinh’s babbling (actual babbling, not Chinese or Japanese or whatever language the girl used to speak), and brought everything to a standstill. 

A complete disaster.

Booster shots in the ballpit?  That threatening note pinned to the child’s clothing.  There was just no recovering from that.

And they blamed her.  Everyone thought she’d done it. No one said it to her face, but if it was one talent Mrs. Darling had it was telling what people were thinking based on what was left unsaid.

Her?  Why did they think she did it?  She’d already risked so much getting that “toddler” admitted to the daycare and spreading the word of the social around all the right circles.  She had gone out of her way to actually WELCOME Tammy and her freakshow; and properly this time!

Was she happy about it? Well...yes.  Trinh not being properly reborn- physically but not chemically- had been a huge security risk.  The kind of thing you could away with in nowhere Alaska, but not in sunny Florida.  Melissa was relieved.  Still, she wouldn’t have done such a thing herself.  She was a “give them enough rope to hang themselves” kind of woman; even if she had started the relationship out by butting heads.

It was enough to go straight home, put Athena in her crib, skip the mixer and go straight to the tequila.  Yes.  That bad.  She didn’t even consider going to the emergency town meeting.  It would have been a farce; a kangaroo court.  That and she didn’t have a sitter.  Such a spectacle with all the shouting and finger pointing was no place for a REAL child like Athena.

With all of that in mind as her booze soaked brain surfaced back to consciousness, she wasn’t at all surprised that she woke up with her head spinning.  What surprised her was how dark it was.  Normally when she passed out, the lights didn’t turn back on until sunlight gobsmacked her in the face..  What shocked her any more was how hard it was to breathe!

BREATHE!  SHE COULDN’T BREATHE!  INHALE! EXHALE!  NOTHING WAS MOVING EITHER WAY! HER CHEST WAS HEAVING, HER LUNGS WERE TRYING TO PUMP (PUMP? IS THAT WHAT LUNGS DID?) BUT NO AIR WAS CIRCULATING.

Something heavy was sitting on her chest, like a cat sneaking into a baby’s crib.  And her throat hurt!  She was choking! Suffocating!  Being strangled. Murder!  Something...someone was literally choking the life out of her!

It was dark.  Too dark to see.  Yet she saw swirling lights and colors all around her as her brain struggled for oxygen.  Deprived of air, her eyes wouldn’t focus enough to make so much as an outline of the thing piled on top of her chest. Weakly, her hands reached out to strike out her assailant.  Too weak.  Too drunk.  Too sleepy.  Too oxygen starved.  All speed, no impact.  She might as well have been a kitten swatting at her bag when she’d already been dunked in the river.

Weak as they were, her remaining senses still recognized a few things.  A kind of sensory memory was still available; the sort of thing one took for granted and ignored right until the moment that someone or something was choking the life out of them.

  Melissa’s hands recognized the soft fleece of footie pajamas that she had dressed and undressed her daughter in on countless nights.  She could literally change her baby in pitch blackness if she called out in the middle of the night.  Quiet as it was, she could still hear the crinkle that always signaled her daughter’s approach over the breathy huffing of her assailant.  And while it was pinning her down most painfully, she’d carried this weight before...many times...  in and out of the womb.

Melissa’s voice came out as a strangled whisper, audible only because of the deathly quiet. “Athenaaaaa…?”  Her baby was choking her.  This must have been something she saw on a cartoon and she was playing too rough!  Her baby was murdering her!  Accidentally murdering her!

Not accidentally, at all.  The voice rang out in the darkness. “Lily!” she said. “My name is Lily you fuckin’ monster!”

Melissa was only able to let out the slightest gasp of surprise before the petite hands around her neck redoubled their efforts and pushed down even harder.  She’d never expected to hear that name ever again.

“You lied to me,” Athena said.  “You had them disfigure me and drug me and put me inside you.  Just so you could turn me into your pet.  You broke my body and you tried to break my fucking mind!”

Melissa tried to shake her head in refusal.  That’s not how it happened!  That’s not how it happened at all!  She just wanted to be a mother!  She just wanted to give someone a fresh start!  A better life.  With a few strings attached yes but…

  But it was getting harder to concentrate. Melissa kicked and bucked; her survival instinct overriding her maternal desires and cognitive dissonance.  She wasn’t going to die.  Not like this!  That only made her baby shift her wait and knee her in her solar plexus, driving more precious air out of her lungs. 

More brightly colored spots blacking out the world that only Melissa could see.

“You broke me.” Athena said.  “You broke my body and told yourself that it was okay because you broke my mind. You kidnapped me and took my life and future away. YOU WOULDN’T EVEN LET ME KEEP MY OWN NAME! YOU COULDN”T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT!”

Tears streamed down Melissa’s face. Even as she kicked and bucked for life, she knew:  Everything her baby girl said was true.  Maybe she was already dead.  She was dead and the Devil was listing her sins using the face of her own personal angel girl.

“And what do you do?” Athena asked as Melissa feebly kicked for her life.  The girl’s body was hot with fury, but her voice was cold as an executioner’s. “You show me off and get wasted. You let me piss and shit myself until you can’t stand the smell.  You buy me toys so that I can entertain your guests and put on shows for them.  You drop me off in a daycare so you can do nothing all day but drink. You don’t even have a job!  And you wouldn’t even let me have my own name.  I don’t even get to be a baby version of MYSELF! I get to be what you made me...”

Melissa’s hands started to feel numb.  Everything hurt.  The dots were coalescing into a bright white light; a halo forming just behind her baby’s head.

Athena’s voice started to sound distorted.  Somehow static filled. Distant. “I never loved you. Not once.  You don’t deserve love.  My name is Lily.  My name is Lil… My na...is...ily. Y..ame is Lily.  LILY!  LILY!”

Melissa’s body went limp and her eyes rolled in the back of her skull.  She didn’t hear what else her baby girl was saying.  Nor did she hear the glass shattering or her front door being broken down…

All she heard was the sound of her own conscience berating her for the last year.  All the terrible  And her conscience sounded an awful lot like Athena…

No.

Like Lily…

She promised herself that if she survived this, she’d be a better mother, a better Mommy to her baby.  That she’d find some way to make it up to her.

Just then, a new voice in the dark space between Melissa’s ears- one that wasn’t hers- chuckled and said “Deal.”