Unfair: A Diaper Dimension Novel (Chapters 115 Uploaded!)

[Personalias]

3 hours ago, Samriis said:

Good christ... I knew something like had to come sometime but it still hits hard... no pun intended. 

It hit me hard too.

[CDfm]

I really needed this. I was missing this story.  The wait was well worth it though.  Two awesome chapters.  I hope that’s not the end of Clark.  but if so, at least he went down with a bang.

I was really getting worried about Tracy because she seemed to have disappeared.  I was somewhat reassured that nothing bad had happened just because she is married to a huge Amazon. I still wasn’t sure if something bad had happened.  Now she might be in some trouble anyway.  Even the principal is going to have a hard time fighting all those teacher amazons and tweeners though. 
I can’t wait to see more of this. 

[Hollis Fox]

This is a non-sequitur question unrelated to the recent chapters, but will the reader ever learn exactly what happened to Chaz and Amy to impair their balance enough to the extent that they can’t walk?

[Personalias]

21 minutes ago, Hollis Fox said:

This is a non-sequitur question unrelated to the recent chapters, but will the reader ever learn exactly what happened to Chaz and Amy to impair their balance enough to the extent that they can’t walk?

Yeah. I thought that was answered already.  The jingly bell rattles that cause giddiness, loss of bladder control and unbalance.  Too much and it destroys your inner ear.  

[Hollis Fox]

1 hour ago, Personalias said:

Yeah. I thought that was answered already.  The jingly bell rattles that cause giddiness, loss of bladder control and unbalance.  Too much and it destroys your inner ear.  

I just went back to Ch 66 and I caught the reference. I thought it was just psychological gaslighting at first, because the Amazons don’t “hear” the bell, like at the baby shower. But now I realize that it’s both psychological and physiological gaslighting. So the Amazons definitely know that the bell toys are destructive to Littles.

[littlepinkdargon]

I hadn't kept up with any writings for a while because I fell into a funk, then saw the patron thing. I do keep updates on some and have been reading reactions, and I just went and read a bit and wow, missed a lot and don't think I can remember where I stopped, so I guess I'll start over and enjoy it from the beginning

 

Thanks for still writing, and I hope things have settled for the better for you.

[Personalias]

1 hour ago, Hollis Fox said:

I just went back to Ch 66 and I caught the reference. I thought it was just psychological gaslighting at first, because the Amazons don’t “hear” the bell, like at the baby shower. But now I realize that it’s both psychological and physiological gaslighting. So the Amazons definitely know that the bell toys are destructive to Littles.

This.  It's a mixture.  

[Personalias]

Chapter 111: The Trial of the Century

There I was, again: waiting in the school clinic, awaiting a rigged trial while Brollish worked sight unseen to ensure my doom and damnation. The key difference between this time and the last was that I definitely needed that fresh diaper that the nurse kept on the corner of her desk. That and I had actually done what I was being accused of.

I’d rushed up to another teacher and sucker punched her right in her schnoz. Then she’d smacked me so hard I saw stars and spanked me within an inch of my life.  In the chaos of it all, students and ex-coworkers had been drawn out of their classrooms and witnessed the thrashing of my lifetime.  

There was no getting around this.  There was no way out. I was done. The best case scenario was that I would get expelled and Janet would find me a full time private babysitter. No daycare would take a Little with a documented history of violence against Amazons. The only place that would is a place I’d never want to visit.   

Maybe Jessica would do it, I fantasized.  She wouldn’t be so bad. She was something of a trust fund baby anyways, so she could afford to hang out with me for free everyday; at least until the end of the school year.  She wanted to be a teacher, too, and talked to me more like I was an adult (or at least a very smart child) than most.  

It wouldn’t be spending my afternoons with Melony sipping on coffee, but it wouldn’t be so bad, would it?  Yeah. That could be nice.

I shuddered as the most intrusive thought burrowed into my brain:  What if Janet didn’t have a choice but to send me to New Beginnings?  Yes, she was my legal guardian, my Mommy, but wasn’t it possible to take that away from her?  All it had taken was some typing on a keyboard to get my adulthood revoked and have me shoved into her arms.  Would it really take much more to declare Janet an unfit parent and then rip me out of those arms so that I could be re-raised in a so-called proper setting?
“Shhhhhhh,” Janet hushed me, rubbing my back and stroking my hair.  “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe. Mommy’s here.  You’re safe.”  I wasn’t safe. I just wasn’t being beat anymore. She cradled me, and bobbed me like I was still screaming, but I had been almost completely silent from the moment I’d caught my breath.  Based on her heart rate, her behavior was more to hide her own shaking.

She was just as afraid as me. Angry too.  She was just doing her damndest to hide it from me.  She didn’t want her ‘baby’ to see her this upset.  It made sense that she was upset, though.  Everything was coming undone, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.  Nothing anyone could do.

After Tracy saved me, events sped up and proceeded in an almost maniacal clockwork fashion.  Brollish power walked out, flanked by Forrest and every spare hand in the front office and guidance.  They took Ambrose away to the teacher’s lounge in the cafeteria, still nursing the bloody nose I gave her. I hoped she was telling the truth.  

Janet blitzed out of her classroom the second her students could be shuttled off to other teachers in her building. Word spread that fast.  Or maybe she’d been in the crowd that saw the aftermath of my stunt. Things were still kind of fuzzy.

Tracy handed me off to Janet and took control of the preschool class, expertly diffusing outraged cries from Mrs. Dunwhich. Tracy’s man mountain of a husband stalked off to the front office, a man on a warpath, and Beouf gave Tracy the bare bones of what she’d seen while Zoge did her best to regain control and herd the other Littles away.

We were waiting in the clinic for about ten minutes for the school nurse to come back from the cafeteria.  My left hand was starting to swell, and bruising discoloration was popping up above and below my backside. Every part of my body that Ambrose had connected with was throbbing, the right side of my face included.

The real pain happened in between the throbs; in the seconds before the aching blunt sensations crescendoed to the point where it was hard to think. When it hurt so bad that I had to close my eyes and hold my breath, I had something to focus on; something to not think about.  It was on the back end, as waves of physical discomfort receded back down and I was able to think as myself that I felt despair.

We were fucked. We were fucked and I’d been the one to fuck it all up.  As recently as last week, I might have been proud of that.  I’d burned the world to the ground around me one last time, blaze of glory as the explosions consumed me.

Unfortunately, my friendships had started to grow back like weeds in the garden of my life; seemingly nourished by the manure that had been dumped all over it. And here I was about to lose them all over again.  Tracy; Beouf; my students; maybe even Janet.  I was going to lose Zoge and Ivy as well.  Billy, Chaz, and Annie were bastards but they were my bastards. Tommy too.  I’d miss the other kids in Beouf’s class.  If nothing else they were a good challenge to poke at and gauge how far I was pushing things.

Would I even get a chance to say goodbye?

What about Amy? What about Pink Hair or the Block Guys, or Wutzhisname? Would I still get to see her once a week or would Janet stop going to Little Voices meetings, too overwhelmed by everything?  Would I still have her after today? Fuck, what had happened in my life that I counted a bunch of baby crazy Amazons and Adopted Littles in various states of emotional and cognitive decay as friends?!

The nurse walked in and went straight to the sink.  “Good,” she said to Janet. “You’re already here.” She started washing her hands and putting on disposable gloves.  She motioned with her head over to a vinyl backed medical couch; normally just used for children to nap on while waiting for parents to pick them up if they had a fever or had puked.  “Lay him down there and get him undressed.”

Janet’s head turned to the still-open door.  “Can we get some privacy? Maybe do this in the bathroom?”

“I’m a nurse, Ms. Grange.  Clark doesn’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

“I meant from others,” Janet said. “I don’t want other children coming in.”  More to the point, the clinic was attached to the front office, and very close to the receptionist area by design.

The nurse sighed tiredly but put some artificial empathy into her tone. “Good point.  Wouldn’t want any of the other kids to worry too much.”  Translation: Wouldn’t want any extra sympathy to spread or parents to get involved in the wake of my upcoming expulsion.

Carrying me, Janet closed the door and locked it, then she laid me down on the soft medical mattress and began to undress me.  I shivered, as she popped open the romper button by button, peeling the green and blue striped garment off of me.  I’d broken out into just enough of a sweat to make myself uncomfortable and cold in the air conditioning.  

Even on the overly padded surface, a changing table pretending to be a mattress, I groaned and winced with my weight shifting and being moved around.

The nurse shuffled over and took a knee to examine me more closely.  “Mmm-mmm-mmm…” she said. “You really did quite a number on yourself.”  

“On himself?” Janet cocked an eyebrow.

“Just a turn of phrase, ma’am.”

I made eye contact with my caregiver. “Just a turn of phrase, Mommy,” I echoed a warning.  This lady spent all her time in close proximity to Brollish and Forrest. Pretty easy to guess where her sympathies lay.  Anything we said could and would be used in the kangaroo court of law.

“I’m going to look at his hand, alright?” the nurse said.  She inched her hand closer to mine, but waited for Janet to give permission.

“Ask him, too.” Janet told her.

The slightest sharpest inhale, and then. “Clark, honey? I’m going to take a look at your hurt hand, okay?”

I nodded.

I flinched as she gingerly poked and squeezed at my bruising left hand.  “Tell me if it hurts.”

“Ow,” I said.  “Ow. Ow. Ow.  Ow.”  

She worked her tongue in her mouth and wiggled her nose with every ‘ow’.  “Good news is I don’t think it’s broken, just really really bruised.  What did you hit, kiddo?”

“I don’t know,” I lied automatically.

“He might not have hit anything,” Janet said. “Ambrose might have hit him there or he might have hit it on the ground when she dropped him.”This was a bold face lie and Janet knew it! If half of my face hadn’t been on fire, my own surprise would have betrayed me.  

Luckily, the nurse wasn’t looking at my face, just then. She doubled back to the sink and opened a cabinet, returning with what looked something like a giant aqua-marine tape measure.  She flipped open the top like it a massive box of dental floss and pulled out a length of thick moist ribbon.

“This bandage is covered with some powerful numbing nanites,” she said. “This should also help bring down the swelling.’  She started wrapping my hand in the wet stuff, binding my entire left hand in a mummy’s mitten.  “Does that feel better, hon?”

I swallowed my pride and let out a pitiful, “Uh-huh.”  It really did too.  The cold wetness of the stuff seeped into my skin and numbed everything and the air dried the outside. Ten seconds after she cut the soggy tape off, the pain in my hand was gone.

The nurse tossed the first pair of gloves, washed her hands, and then pulled on a second pair.  “In a few hours that hand is gonna ache again,” she said. “Baby aspirin or some other children’s pain killer will help over the next day or two.  Just make sure he’s not crawling around on it or banging on it for fun. It’s like the dentist where he doesn’t feel it now, he will feel it later.”

“Got it,” Janet replied. Then, to me she asked, “Got it, Clark?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I got it.”  

“You may want to put on some gloves,” the nurse advised Janet. She put the bandages back and took out a tube of cream.  “Let’s take care of some of those other owies.”

I chomped down on my tongue. The last time I’d seen a tube like that was after I’d been zapped and ninety-nine percent of my body hair had been scorched off.  I was already breaking orders by unconsciously digging my hands into the couch, gripping it like it was an animal whose guts I could rip out.  

“You take care of the bottom, and I’ll take care of the top?” the nurse offered.

Janet sanitized her hands, but only put on one glove.  She grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket and held it very close to my face.  “Sure thing,” she said.  “Juuuuust a second.”  There was a clicking sound.  “Roll over on your belly for me, Clark.”

I did. Then another several clicks.  

“What are you doing?” the nurse asked.

“Documentation,” Janet said. “That cream helps repair the skin, doesn’t it? Gets rid of bruising and discoloration?”

The nurse only smiled and said “Ah.”

I rolled back over and stared at the ceiling while one giant dabbed numbing cream onto my face, while the other ripped open my diaper and wiped my backside.  “Hold still, bubba,” I heard, before my legs were lifted up and I heard a few more clicks from her camera.

“You must have fallen really hard on your face, Clark” the nurse pretended to muse. “Did you trip while you were running around?”

“He didn’t trip,” Janet’s voice had turned to ice.  She was still changing me, spreading that goop filled with pain numbing nanites in it and slipping the fresh Monkeez underneath me. But her voice was looking for a fight.  “That’s where Ambrose started beating him.”

The nurse was still playing defense for Administration. “How can you tell?  Kids trip and fall all the time. Accidents happen.”

Janet taped me back up and rolled me over. “Concrete doesn’t leave hand prints.”

“Ah.”

A tense two minutes later, I was sitting back up and having a hand mirror shoved in my face. There was some slight discoloration, a bit of red irritation on my face, but it didn’t look like a bear had tried to maul me. I’d fallen asleep on my side in the sun and barely avoided a proper sunburn.

My left hand was bandaged up in bright colors, but the right side of my face, back, thighs, and buttocks looked like I had the barest beginnings of diaper rash. Nothing a bit of makeup wouldn’t fix, or even just dimming the lights. My damage was highlighted. Ambrose’s was faded.

Typical.

“Thank you, Mommy,” I said, looking at the bulge in Janet’s pocket.

“You’re very welcome, sweetie.” Janet told me.  She started dressing me back up.

“You don’t have to do that,” the nurse said.

“I know,” Janet replied. “Just easier for the trip home.”

“Trip home?”  the nurse asked. “School’s not over yet.”

“I’m leaving early.”  Her eyes were focused on me, and buttoning up all of the snaps on the aired out romper, but her body was tense. Waiting for the challenge.

It came. “That might not be such a good idea,” the nurse said.  “I have a feeling Mrs. Brollish will need to talk to him.  She’s doing interviews right now to figure out what happened. Make sure she gets all sides of the story.”

“It’s okay, Mommy,” I said, playing the perfect Little angel that I most certainly wasn’t. Only the guilty run, and running wasn’t going to get me anywhere.  “I can stay.”

Janet gave my forehead another kiss, and picked me up. “Okay, baby. Let’s get you back to class.”

“Actually…” the nurse interjected, opening the clinic door again.  “He should probably stay here. Might not be safe to let him back in the classroom.”

“It’s his naptime. I’ve got a pack and play in my room, still,” Janet offered.

The nurse gave a pleasant, yet hollow smile. “That’s not a good idea, either. Let’s just keep him here.  He can sleep on my couch if he needs to.”

“I’m not sleepy,” I said.
The Amazons went forward in the conversation without me. “You’re free to go back to your room to teach, Ms. Grange. I don’t mind watching him.”  They didn’t want me and Janet alone.  Didn’t want either of us unsupervised or unaccounted for.

Janet sat down in one of the chairs and held me in her lap, wrapping her arms around me, afraid that I might float away from her.  “We’ll wait here, then.”  I felt another kiss on the top of my head. I really wanted Lion right then. I settled for reaching down and gripping the side of Janet’s lap with my good hand and sucking on my pacifier.

Our first few visitors were students. Nothing major. Just kids getting afternoon medication and the like. One kid stopped and interrogated Janet. “Is he sick?” that sort of thing. Nothing that couldn’t be shooed away, with the worst one being a fourth grader that couldn’t resist saying “feel better”.

But then a familiar tone in a language I still barely understood came swinging into the clinic. Ivy waddled hand in hand with her mother past the clinic, but her head turned to the side and peaked in.  We made eye contact.

“Clark!”

She slipped out of Zoge’s grasp, climbed up on top of a neighboring seat.

“Ivy!” Janet laughed. “What are you doing?”

As an answer, the Little Yamatoan gently leaned over and wrapped her arms around me. Light as a feather, she applied the barest bit of pressure so that I could sense the loving intent.

“Ivy,” Zoge said, her voice retaining its innate musicality. “Make good choices.”

Ivy stood back up and hopped back down. “Yes, Mommy.”

“Hana,” Janet giggled, forgetting the perilous position we were in.  “What’s going on?”

Zoge picked her daughter up, and positioned her on her hip.  “It seems our children are picking up bad habits from one another,” she said, cryptically.

“No, I mean, what are you doing here?”

“Ah,” Zoge nodded.  “Mrs. Brollish wishes to interview everyone she can that witnessed...” a beat of hesitation, a glance at the nurse, “the incident.  Ivy and I were reporting what we saw happen.  Mrs. Beouf and Miss Tracy are watching the children.  I am on my way to relieve them so that Mrs. Beouf can report. We’re already calling parents to inform them what happened and to have them come and pick up their children early.”

“Oh,” Janet said. “Alright.”  

“Good luck,” Zoge said. “And see you tomorrow, Clark.”  That earned her an upturned eyebrow from the nurse.

Speaking of the nurse, both Ivy and Zoge’s back was to the woman.  “I’m sorry, Clark. You taught me to never ask for a hug without permission.”  The way she said it sounded rehearsed and phony.  She did something with her eye, too.

Did…did Ivy just wink at me?!

“Ivy,” Zoge said, then she said something in Yamatoan.  Probably the word for ‘quiet’.

“Sorry, Mommy.”

“Good luck,” Zoge said, and then slipped with her daughter back out into the reception area and out the door.

Calling parents. Interviewing students and teachers. Sequestering witnesses. Interrupting afternoon classes. Brollish was in high gear; full damage control. She wanted this over now; after school just wouldn’t do.  I’d probably just ruined her day; so I at least had that going for me.

A brief knock on the side of the door, and Emiliano came striding in. The top of his head didn’t quite touch the massive frame, but he ducked out of habit.  “Hey, Jefe,” he said, his hoarse yet friendly growl just above a stage whisper.  “How you holdin’ up?”

“He’s fine,” Janet said. “He got hurt, but he’ll be okay.”

I’m not sure how it’s possible to give someone the side eye when they’re standing directly in front of them, but Tracy’s husband found a way.

“I’m shook,” I said. “But I’ll heal.”

Emiliano hunkered down on the balls of his feet. “Good. Good.  You took a heck of a whoopin’.”  A mischievous grin played at the corners of his mouth.  “It’s a good thing you’re not taller or I might be scared of you.”

I chuckled. The biggest man I’d ever met just told me that I took a beating like a champ.  How could I not?

“Sir,” the nurse tried to interrupt. unless you’re a parent or a teacher, you need to leave.”

He waved her off. “Mmmhmm. Sure. Uno momento.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He ran his hands through his thick black hair. “I was here to help Tracy quit,” he said. “Bring her in. Let her talk. Bring her out. No funny business. Comprende?”

A rock dropped in my stomach.  “Yeah,” I said.  “I understand.”

“Yeah,” the big man nodded sympathetically, “Good thing we saw you, first, eh?”
I jolted up in Janet’s lap.  “You mean…?” I dared to hope. “Tracy’s staying?”

“Sir…” the nurse tried to catch Emiliano’s attention.  She went ignored by all of us.

He shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?” Janet asked. She squeezed me a little tighter. I squeezed back.

“On how scary I was,” Emiliano flashed his teeth. “How smart Brollish is. If Tracy wants to keep coming here.”

“Sir. You need to-”

Emiliano stood back up to his full height and the nurse stopped talking.  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m going.”  A boulder sized fist floated down to me.  “You stay strong, eh, Jefe?”  I took my good hand and bumped it against his.  “Right on.  See you around, Boss. I’ll stop by your class and tell her you said ‘Hello’ before I go.”

The nurse was visibly relieved when she heard the exit door swing open.

Right on the man mountain’s heels, Beouf popped in, holding of all things, a baby bottle.  It wasn’t filled with milk, exactly; none of the overly processed cow stuff from the cafeteria. This stuff had more of a creamy tint to it.  More off-white than white.  Kind of like goat’s milk.

“Hey,” she said, quietly. “How you holding up?”

“We’re fine,” Janet said just as softly.  “Got some owies but they’re taken care of for now.”

My old mentor nodded.  “Good.”  Everyone was talking so low right now, afraid of saying something too loud or having something overheard.  All parties on both sides of this trial were in cloak and dagger mode.  Nobody wanted the other to hear something they shouldn’t, and both words and the volume that they were spoken at were being chosen very carefully.

She looked at me and shook the bottle. “Do you want a bottle, buddy?”

Janet reached for it instead.  I looked up at her and caught a mixture of concern and confusion.  “The bottle is yours,” Beouf said. “I popped by your room and grabbed it out of a mini fridge.”

“Oh,” was all Janet said. I felt her entire body heat up for some reason. “Goat’s milk.”

Some combination of looming existential dread and topically applied pain killers kept me from questioning why Janet would have goat’s milk at school. She couldn’t even remember to bring the diaper bag half the time.

In hindsight…
“If you want, we can start stocking it in my room,” Beouf plowed over the thoughts that wouldn’t quite come to me.  “Give it to him for snack time or something.  Take it with us to lunch.”

“Lunch?” I echoed.  Did Beouf really think that I’d be back for lunch this time tomorrow?

“We’ll still have to keep it in the classroom,” my oldest friend said. “You know how the cafeteria folks are. They don’t like holding onto anything that isn’t theirs. It’s already a stretch to get them to wash and dry the bibs everyday.”

There was a nervous frenetic energy underpinning Beouf’s speech. It had the cadence of someone on death row talking about what they were doing tomorrow.  We weren’t going to win this, but she was going to go down kicking and screaming with me anyways.

“Yeah,” Janet said. “I’d like that.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Beouf looked down and crossed her arms.  “What’s going on is that I’m kinda miffed at you, young man.” She switched instantly to her stern teacher tone.  It was the worst kind, too. Not mad…just disappointed.  “You made me a promise, and broke it.”

I was leaning back into Janet before I realized it, trying to bury the back of my head in her so that she would somehow magically envelop me.

“What promise?” Janet asked.

The volume of conversation had jumped up more than a notch.  Anyone listening in would barely need to strain to overhear.  The nurse looked up from her desk again, her fingers drifting over to the computer keyboard.  

“We had a talk this morning about following rules and procedures, didn’t we, Clark?”

My face burned hot and I stared down at my knees.  “Yes ma’am.”

“And who got out of line when they shouldn’t have?”

“I did.”

“And do we get out of line when we’re transitioning from the cafeteria to the classroom?”

“No ma’am…”

“And did you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Should you have?”

“No ma’am.”

“What do you say?”

I swallowed my pride.  It was the least I could do.  “Sorry, Mrs. B.  Sorry, Mommy.”  

I braced myself for the next question.  Something about controlling my temper or not letting bullies get the best of me.  No such line of questioning came.  All that happened was Melony ruffled my hair.  “Mrs. B. is still upset with your choices,” she said, “but she still loves you very much.”

I mumbled something.  It might have been “I love you, too”.

The bottle’s rubber nipple brushed against my cheek.  “Drink your bottle, hon.”

I accepted the bottle, and Janet jostled me around so that I was cradled again. Letting her hold it for me was easier with my injured hand.  Our breathing started to sync up while the cool creamy milk filled my mouth.  Waves of relaxation started to settle into me. My pulse dropped as my belly filled. I wasn’t even that thirsty, but the behavior mixed with the body heat and the familiar flavor mingled together to give me a sense of calm.

I wasn’t about to get expelled. I was just chugging my own version of a breakfast shake first thing in the morning.  Or having liquid desert right before a weekend nap.  Speaking of breakfast shake, something was off about the flavor of this batch.  It was actually a little too creamy; with something unnatural about it.  I pulled back and threw my head out so that I could get the nipple out of my mouth.  “Vanilla?”

Beouf blushed. “I hope you don’t mind.  I put some syrup in from the coffee mix.”  It was directed at Janet, not me.

“It’s fine,” Janet sighed. “I just want today to be over.”

“You and me, both,” Beouf agreed.  “You and me, both.”

In the far distance, past the reception area, the sound of a heavy door slamming closed and equally heavy footsteps registered.  Someone was making a very loud exit from Brollish’s office.  Probably not Brollish from the sound of it. That witch could glide across the floor.

“That’s my cue.” Beouf said. “Time to put out some more fires. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Janet said while I took the bottle back in my mouth.

Beouf brushed shoulders with the next visitor in my own private cell.  “I just got done talking to that principal of yours,” Martha Dunwhich said to the nurse.  Her hair was frizzier and her face was still red, but her eyes weren’t puffy and her makeup was intact. She’d been yelling and she wasn’t done.  She slammed her palms on the nurse’s desk and leaned over so she could shout directly into the other woman’s face.  “Are you also going with the story that a Little broke that awful woman’s nose?!”  

“I”m not allowed to divulge that information,” the nurse replied, coldly.

Dunwhich wasn’t having it. “You examined her. Is her nose even broken? Let me see her! I bet she just got kicked”

“I’m not allowed to divulge that information.”

“You expect me to believe that a grown woman was attacked?” Dunwhich shrieked. “Attacked by…by…a baby?!”

“Ahem…”  Janet cleared her throat.

The Amazon turned around with a sneer.  “Wh-?”  Then immediately melted when she saw me her shriek turned to a squeak. “Awwwww!”  

My entire body tensed.  Feeling it, Janet drew me in closer, cradling me so that half of my vision was obscured by her breasts.  It was a nicer view than I’d been previously treated to.

Dunwhich trotted over to Janet, her eyes white saucers. “You poor dear!” she gushed. “You’ve had quite a day haven’t you?”  Uninvited, she took the seat next to Janet.  “Does it hurt bad, baby boy?”

“Hello,” Janet said. “Do we know you?”

Dunwhich regained her composure. “No. Not at all. Martha Dunwhich, pleasure to meet you.”  She extended her arm out.

“My hands are full,” Janet said just warmly enough to not put the other woman off. I.E.P. meetings or not, teaching is too often a customer service industry as much as anything. Janet had that skill set on lock.  

The start of this nightmare took her hand back. “Of course,” she said. “Of course. I met your Little boy right as he had his first accident.”  Not this story again.  I kept my eyes straight up so I wouldn’t roll them.  “You’re his Mommy?”

“Thank goodness!” Martha Dunwhich said. “For a second I was worried that…that…that bully had Adopted him and that’s why she was spanking him.”  Janet shifted in her seat subtly, so that her knees were starting to face away from the other woman.

“So do you know Clark besides that?”

“Oh no, no, no,” Dunwhich corrected herself.  “I haven’t seen him since.  That and today.  I gave his class some extra cupcakes!  He was so cute!”  Her hands fidgeted her lap, like she was just envisioning reaching out and pinching me on the cheek again.  “So well behaved too!  A bit rambunctious and silly, but that’s natural for them.”

I sucked on the milk harder, almost wanting to gag myself.  Janet’s face was a placid lake, but based on the subtle shifting in her lap, I had a feeling we were in this boat together. For once, the whole ‘seen and not heard’ thing was playing to my advantage.  I didn’t want to talk to this woman.

Oblivious to our own discomfort, Dunwhich continued to yammer. “I’m going to have to go home, and explain to Emily why hitting Littles is wrong, now.  She’s probably traumatized, watching your poor sweet boy get…”  She topped. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Janet said evenly.

“And that principal is making up some story like he hit her!”

I stopped the flow of milk with my tongue.  What was she talking about? She was there when I marched right up to Ambrose and threw my whole weight into that punch.

“As if such a sweet Little boy would purposefully attack an adult!”

Except she wasn’t!  She’d been handing out those cupcakes on the side of the cafeteria, while Ambrose had been dressing Elmer down- literally- around the corner closer to the front entrance!  Could it be?  Had the angles accidentally worked in my favor?!

“Hmmm…” was all that Janet said.

“He might have been a tad naughty and excited! But he didn’t deserve that!”

“Ma’am,” the nurse said. “You really shouldn’t be-”

“I shouldn’t what?” Dunwhich turned on Brollish’s eyes and ears here.  “Tell the truth?”  She took out her phone.  “I saw the whole thing and filmed it!  Right in front of the kids, this abusive monster just picks up a baby and STARTS…!” She looked at me again and lowered her voice. “I’ve already told her.  If that brute is in Emily’s classroom tomorrow morning, I’m pulling my daughter out and taking this to the School Board.”

I let the milk flow again. Administrators feared two things: Angry Parents and School Board members.  If I was going down, I was happy to know I was taking Ambrose down with me.  But maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t going down, either.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Dunwhich said. “I’ve got to get my daughter out of here.  I hope things turn out okay for you and your Little.”

One of the pushiest Amazons I’d ever encountered (and that was saying a lot) showed herself out, and left me to finish the bottle and be burped in relative privacy with only the nurse for silent company.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Janet whispered over and over again, patting and rubbing at my back.  “You’re gonna be fine.”  She didn’t fully believe it either.  Some unexpected blessings were blowing our way but we were far from out of the woods.  I belched without complaint, doing everything I could not to make things more difficult than they were.

Beouf came back in, only poking her head through the open door.  “Come on,” she whispered.  “It’s almost time.”  Janet carried me past reception on her hip. Beouf lead the way, despite us all knowing where we were headed. “Won’t be long. We’ve only got one person ahead of us.”

Like a shadow, the nurse followed us, keeping her distance but still doing her level best to mind anyone’s business but her own.  We still couldn’t speak freely.

We were waiting in the hallway just outside of Brollish’s office, when a mighty need came over me; one that had nothing to do with bodily functions or autonomy.  “Can you please put me down?” I asked Janet, tapping her on her shoulder.  “I need to walk into the office.”

“Why?”

“I just…I just do, okay?”

That was good enough for Janet.  She set me down softly on the carpet, leaning over so she could still hold my good hand.  I gave hers a squeeze. She squeezed back.

The door opened slowly and quietly. Out of the office came two relatively tiny figures.  They were a mother and son; Tweeners. The Mom was about the same height as Tracy, but skinnier, practically stick like, her face wrinkled prematurely with the constant worry lines of someone walking life’s tightrope. There were a handful of fifth-graders taller than her. By graduation, that number would shoot up with growth-spurts and early onset puberty.  The boy, a four year old, and because of his heritage, he was one of the few students that I was still slightly taller than.

“Mr. Gibson?”  Elmer asked.

“Hey, buddy.” I waved meekly, trying not look as ridiculous as I felt right then.

Elmer’s face scrunched up and his mouth opened, but no sound came out.  His face turned pinker and pinker and tears started dripping down his cheeks before finally a tea kettle of a wail issued forth from his throat.

Oh no! Not again!  I stared at the floor, ashamed at the monster I’d become to my own student. He couldn’t even look at me without breaking down into a panic attack.  I gripped the pacifier dangling from my collar and considered shoving it into my mouth.  Or would that make things worse?  

Two arms, slightly pudgy with baby fat wrapped around my torso and a not-quite kindergartener’s head buried itself in my shoulder. “THANKYOOOOOOOOU!” Elmer bawled into me.  “TH-TH-TH-TH-THANKYOOOOOOOOOOOU!”

“Thank you?” my voice started to crack.  “Elmer? B-b-buddy. What are you-? Why are you-? Why?”

“I’M SORRRRRRRRRRRY! I’M SORRY! I’M S-S-S-SORRRRRRY! I’M SO S-S-SORRY!”

I dislodged my arms from the tiny Tweener’s grip, just so that I could hug him back with all the strength I had left in my body.  “It’s okay, buddy,” I whispered. “It’s okay.  You don’t have anything to be sorry for.  Nothing.”

“Awwwwww,” Beouf loudly cooed over me. “Looks like you finally got that hug you were both looking for. Isn’t that sweet?”

“Yeah,” Janet’s voice cracked. “It really is.”

Their comments went completely over my head.  My entire focus on the child who needed me right then and there.  “I LOVE YOU, MR. GIBSON!” Elmer blubbered. “I LOVE YOU! I’M SORRY! I LOVE YOU! I! LOVE! YOOOOU! THANK YOOOOOOU!”

I’d done a lot of crying since my Adoption. A lot. A lot, a lot.  I’d shed more tears in the last several weeks than I had in the several decades prior. The freedom to scream and shout and cry at every thing that vexed me was one of the few freedoms I was still permitted.  One type of crying that I hadn’t done a whole lot of, however, was happy crying.

My face broke out into the biggest, mushiest, dopiest grin, and as my eyes scrunched together, the drops of water came out as if squeezed from a nearly wrung out sponge. For a moment, just for a moment, I was my old self.  I was a teacher, an adult giving comfort to a poor child who was overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the past few hours.

For just a second, I was Clark Gibson, preschool teacher, and it was the greatest goddamn feeling in the world.  “It’s okay, buddy,” I said as calmly as I could, my voice fluctuating with the tightness of my throat.  I just kept rubbing his back in the same way that Janet had taken to rubbing mine.  “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”  For just a bit, I believed my own lie.  

His mother’s hand landed softly on his shoulder.  “Okay, Elmer. It’s time to go home.”

Elmer stepped back from me and wiped his nose on his shirt.  “But-!”

“You were a good boy and told Mrs. Brollish what you know,” his mother said. “Now it’s time to go.”

Always more mature for his age than people gave him credit for, Elmer sniffled, wiped his nose on his own shirt, and took his mother’s hand.  “Bye.”

I wiped my own nose on my bicep. “Bye, bud.”  The pair walked out into the empty reception area and off into the front parking lot just by the bus loop.

Janet knelt down and brushed away my own tears. “You okay?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. Not really. But I don’t have a choice right now, do I?”

My Mommy’s lip quivered like she was about to start. “No. I don’t think we do. Come on.”

Flanked by Beouf, Janet and I walked into Brollish’s office hand in hand. Brollish didn’t get up from her desk. Scooted off to the side, was another older woman staring dutifully down at her county issued laptop and typing up a storm.

“Ms. Grange. Clark. Please, have a seat.”  She gestured to the familiar face.  “Miss Bankhead, our Resource Compliance Specialist, is here simply to record.”

Bankhead acknowledged our presence with the briefest glimpse.  “Hello.” Then she went back to typing as if she were a court stenographer.

The flaps in Brollish’s throat went taut as she craned her neck over us. “Mrs. Beouf, would you please shut the door on your way out?”

Beouf shut the door, but joined  us by the seat next to where Janet and I were standing.  “I’m here as a representative and advocate.”

“Of?”

“I’m Clark’s teacher, and Ms. Grange’s union representative. I have every right to be here if Janet as either the child’s legal guardian or faculty member allows me to be.”

Janet sat down and pulled me into her lap.  “Yes, please. Thank you,” she said immediately.

Beouf did not take the seat beside us, yet.  She was staring at Brollish, the old crone busy making calculations.

“You weren’t here for Ivy,” Brollish said.

“Mrs. Zoge is both her mother and a school employee,” Beouf said matter of factly. “You needed at least one adult minding my class.” There was a moment of clacking on Bankhead’s laptop.  “Correct? We have that in writing? We still have that in the email you sent to me immediately after and the notes from when we talked?”

Brollish didn’t respond, but Bankhead gave a subtle head bob in the affirmative.

“You weren’t here for the last student I interviewed,” Brollish tried.

Beouf pushed her glasses up my nose.  “Elmer is not my student. He had his mother with him. Beyond basic supervisory duties to ensure his safety that all faculty and staff have, I have no connection with him or his mother.”

Brollish tried a verbal parry. “So are you saying I should have let Miss Ambrose be present when I spoke privately to Elmer and his mother?” I winced at the idea.

“I am saying that I have the right to be here if my student’s parent or guardian requests it.”

Janet spoke up. “I request it.”

“Will you be doing this for all of your students if their parents request it?” Brollish asked, her face a grim mask.  Now that we were in there, the entire office was smelling strongly of potpourri; dead flowers meant to cover up the smell of rotting flesh held together by a wicked soul. Maybe that was just my imagination.  

Like the last time, I decided to sit back and trust my mentor.  “If they ask me, yes,” Beouf said. “Assuming you feel the need to interview eight other Littles about what a member of staff did.”

A lump moved from one cheek to another with Brollish sliding her tongue all around her teeth behind closed lips.  “Are you sure you’re allowed to be here, Mrs. Beouf?  I’m not sure this is necessary.”

Janet adjusted me on her lap. “I would like to also officially request union representation,” Janet said.  “And for Mrs. Beouf to remain as a witness to go over the notes with Miss Bankhead and ensure that digital and hard copies are sent out to the necessary parties.”

Brollish’s face had barely shifted. Through half closed eyes she said, “Do you really think union representation is necessary for this, Mrs. Grange? This is a conference and investigation concerning Clark’s behavior this afternoon. You’re not here as a teacher.”
“Can you guarantee in writing that nothing said here will directly affect evaluations as a teacher?” Beouf butted in. “If he’s suspended or expelled, are you going to hold it against her taking time off to see to his needs?  Or can you assure us that such penalties are off the table?”

I focused on the little hairs of Brollish’s upper lips, checking across the room to see if they were still moving; hoping that maybe the old bat had died sitting down with her eyes open. “You’re very welcome to join us, Mrs. Beouf.”

Beouf sat down next to us. Too bad the additional context as to why she was allowed to sit was the exact opposite of comforting.  “Much appreciated,” my old friend said. “Thank you.”

A thin smile that came nowhere close to her eyes creaked up Brollish’s skull.  “You’re very welcome.”  Her eyes moved over to Janet’s lap.  “Clark?”

I waited for her to say something.  Several seconds ticked by.  She didn’t.  “Yes, ma’am?”

“Why did you punch Mrs. Ambrose in the nose?”

“We don’t know that he did,” Beouf interrupted before I could react.

The slightest eyebrow raise from across the table.  “Don’t we?”

“Not as far as I’m aware,” Beouf fired back with equal calmness. “Are you accusing him of something?”

“Mrs. Ambrose is on record saying Clark ran at her screaming, and punched her right in the face as she was bending over to get at eye level with another student,” Brollish explained. Funny thing is that it was true. “Her nose is broken. That’s good enough for me.”

“How do we know that he did it on purpose?” Beouf asked. “He could have accidentally hit her when she started spanking him.”

“Why would she spank him then?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Beouf said. “That’s not something that is allowed, not without written parental permission.”

“I did not and do not give permission.” Janet added.

Like a chess player viewing the board, Brollish put her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers in concentration.  “It’s true,” the crone admitted, “that corporal punishment is frowned upon.  Certain bits of wiggle room are permissible in the name of self-defense.”

“Self-defense?!” Janet sneered. “You’re kidding. Self? Defense?  From a Little? A Maturosis Little? A baby?”

“Maturosis or not,” Brollish replied, “I can’t allow a student on this campus who is a danger to others. An unprovoked attack on a faculty member is by definition dangerous.  An entire afternoon of instruction has been lost because my preschool teacher has a broken nose.”

“If you take her word for it,” Janet snipped, barely keeping her cool.

“Why would I take the word of a child over an adult?” Brollish came back icily.  “Not only a child, but someone I had to fire due to breach of contract?”

My everything was getting ready to burst with how angry I was.  I must have passed that energy into Janet because she said, “You haven’t even heard his word, yet!”

“Janet…!” Beouf warned too late.

“Yes,” Brollish pretended to agree. “Let’s hear what Clark has to say for himself.  Clark? Please. Tell us in your own words. What happened?”

I so wanted to shout every obscenity over at Brollish.  She had me over a barrel and she knew it.  Elmer had said what happened.  So had Ivy. Both had the mindsets of literal children. Brollish just wanted to catch me in a lie or get me to confess.

I needed to scream. I needed to thrash. I needed to think. I needed time.  A fullness in my gut, newly irritated by the addition of heavy cream and vanilla, no doubt, made me need to do something else.  

I inhaled. Fuck it. Might as well.

I leaned forward, stared off into the middle distance directly in front of Brollish, pretended I was giving her the middle finger, and filled my pants up sitting in Janet’s lap.  It was easy since I’d had so much practice. After the initial three second push, my body sped right past the point of no return and a veritable mudslide gushed out of me and into the seat of my Monkeez.  

“Is he…?” Brollish looked genuinely disturbed.

“Pooping?” Beouf said, casually. “Probably. That’s what the diaper’s there for, right?”

Janet scooped me up by the armpits, taking more pressure off my rear. That made things go along even faster, the front of my diaper swelled and sagged beneath me with added pee as my bowels finished clearing themselves. The snaps between my legs were doing more than their fair share to hold the increasing mass up.

Was it my diet? Fiber? Fruits and veggies?  Was I slightly lactose intolerant?  Had I just done it so much by this point that I’d become good at it?  Hard to tell.  But there was a certain happiness that came over me, watching Brollish’s nose wrinkle and her being forced to sit there awkwardly, trapped in her own office, looking at me taking a dump right in front of her.  If it had been a potted plant, it would have been better, but this would have to do.

Janet lowered me back down to her lap, and I felt the warm muck and mess spread around beneath my redistributed weight. I allowed a goofy, happy smile,and gave out an audible sigh of relief.  Watching Brollish’s lip curl ever so slightly, witnessing that breach of composure made the lack of dignity gratifying.

Comparing their faces a new realization occurred to me:  Beouf seemed relaxed, oddly amused. Not only was she used to seeing Littles poop their pants on a daily basis as to be immune to disgust; but she very likely knew me well enough to sense the joy I was taking at Brollish’s discomfort.  Janet was already settling me back into her lap and cuddling me in her grip, but she was being much more still and steady with her legs. Me pooping myself was gross, but I was her Little, her baby, so that made it more than bearable. Bankhead’s eyebrows twitched slightly, but she went right back to typing as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.  She’d been in so many I.E.P. meetings over the years, that the idea of a Little having an accident right there at the meeting was only foreign in that most Littles didn’t get to attend their I.E.P. meetings.

Brollish was quietly repulsed. Children, which I was supposed to be, were dirty things that were tolerated and humored in small doses.  Moreover, the gears were turning in her brain, looking for the next angle of attack.  In short, three of the Amazons strongly believed that I was actually a baby for all intents and purposes.  Brollish? She either didn’t believe it or it just didn’t factor into her calculations.

Interesting.

Bonus points, my spite shit had bought me some time.  Just not enough.

“If you’re finished,” Brollish said. “Why don’t you tell me why you hit the teacher.”

“Can I change him, first?” Janet asked. “I don’t want him getting a rash.”

She moved to get up but Brollish motioned her back down. “No no.  That can wait.  That’s what the diaper’s for, right?” She burrowed her gaze down into me “Talk to us Clark. Please.”

“He was…”

“No thank you Mrs. Beouf,” she cut Melony off. “Your testimony has already been taken. No need to coach.”  Melony gripped the arms of her chair and stared at me with as much fervor, her jaw working and grinding like she was trying to send me a message via telepathy.
I blinked

“No need to coach.”  She was coaching me, wasn’t she?

Two blinks.

“You’re free to go back to your room to teach, Ms. Grange. I don’t mind watching him.”   And they were keeping me away from the others, and under watch so that they couldn’t tell me something.

Three.

“You needed at least one adult minding my class.”  That would mean Ambrose’s class too, wouldn’t it?

“See you around, Boss. I’ll stop by your class and tell her you said ‘Hello’ before I go.”  So it stood to reason that Tracy was watching our kids alone, too.  School had to keep functioning as a school before the buses pulled out.

Four blinks.

“It seems our children are picking up bad habits from one another.”

 “I’m sorry, Clark. You taught me to never ask for a hug without permission.”

“Looks like you finally got that hug you were both looking for.”

It was a good thing I’d just shit my pants because then someone could shout ‘You-Reek-Uh!’

“I saw my friend Elmer,” I said. “And I really really missed him because when I was a big boy I used to be his teacher.”  I tug my bandaged left hand up over my bottom lip and started playing with.  With my right hand I started fiddling with the pacifier.

“And?”

“I got Ivy to get me out of the harness so I could run over to Elmer and give him a hug.”  The first few syllables were garbled until Janet gently pulled my fingers out of my own mouth.

“And?”

I looked out of the corner of my eye. Beouf was leaning further back in the chair with each passing second. Tension and nervousness was exiting her body, practically evaporating.

“I tried to give him a hug,” I continued, “but then somebody grabbed me and I got scared and I turned around  and my hand hurt and then,” I started to sniffle.  I made my throat close up and crushed my face into itself so I could let out one pathetic falsetto, “owie!”  

“Shhhhh,” Janet said, rubbing my back again. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Then with more volume, Janet said. “So my Little boy went to give a friend a hug, hopped out of line, ran away, and interrupted Ambrose giving some kind of instruction to a child. Does that sound correct?”

Brollish removed her glasses and exhaled through her nose.  “According to the majority of reports I have received? Yes. It seems that way.”

I’d done it! We’d done it! Brollish didn’t want to give us time to coordinate and create a cover story, but she still needed to keep the school running!  Beouf, Zoge, and Tracy all had time to talk with each other and communicate, get their story straight and pass along hints to me!  Tracy must have even gotten Elmer and his mother in on the act when parents were called.

That doesn’t seem like self-defense to me,” Mrs. Beouf said. “Even if it was, it has no merit regarding expulsion.”

Defeated, Brollish asked. “Why do you say that?”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that everything Ambrose said is true.” Beouf said. “A student of mine slipped his harness, ran up, and attacked an adult unprovoked.  Clark has a Developmental Plateau somewhere between eighteen and thirty months. Higher in some areas, lower in others. One and a half to two and a half years old, tops.  Functionally a toddler in almost everything but raw intellect; fairly common in Maturosis when diagnosed and treated correctly.” She chuckled under her breath. “I’ve got a model I can show you using blocks if you’d like.”

Brollish replaced her glasses. “Get on with it,” she sighed.

“If a not even three year old sucker punched an adult and then was publicly beaten, do you think it would be a good idea to expel a student for that?”

“I do not.”

“Expulsion should only be considered in extreme circumstances,” Beouf quoted as if from a written document (which she very likely was). “Such as when a student is a danger to other students.”

“Yes,” Brollish agreed, a bit too readily.  “You’ve got a point.” She leaned over in her desk, opened up a cabinet, and from her witch’s cauldron, she took out a manilla folder. “Which is why I’d like to discuss this.”

She opened it up. Stapled to the inside was a clear plastic sandwich bag containing an absolutely vile looking bottle of what used to hold cinnamon. Worse than the bag, in the folders were pictures of a Little boy in a sailor suit coughing up clouds of brown dust, a single one showing the first round of vomit coming out of his mouth.

“The photographer saved a few of these for me,” Brollish said.  “Care to explain, Clark?”

The feeling of victory I’d experienced planted itself right between my shoulder blades; a nagging itch that I just couldn’t reach.  I’d been so close, too.  “No…” I said. “I don’t.”

“He probably doesn’t even remember that,” Beouf tried.

“It doesn’t matter if he remembers it or not,” Brollish answered. Her tone a quiet mockery of Beouf’s early confidence. “I have evidence to suggest that he poisoned himself and several other students.  That’s dangerous. Very dangerous.  He even hid the evidence in the diaper pail somehow. That signifies intent, don’t you think.”

She’d held onto this as a back up plan in case her original gambit failed.

“I thought it’d be funny,” I said.  Honestly? In hindsight? It kind of was.  Playing the idiot had gotten me this far.

Beouf scowled, “Clark…”  I wasn’t helping myself.

“Speaking as his parent and a teacher,” Janet said, “I think you’re reaching, ma’am.”

As if all that she needed were the pictures, she slid them across the desk so that Janet could get an even better look.  “Oh?”

“If Clark were a thirty two year old adult,” Janet stated, “I would agree with you.  That’s a fireable offense, for sure.”  

Behind her glasses Brollish was grimacing. She suddenly saw where this was going.

“Clark is legally a baby, now,” my Mommy continued. “He doesn’t even have the identification number he was born with.  He’s legally a different person. Fresh start.  It’s not fair to hold him to one set of standards and then another when as it suits us.”

“He nearly killed himself choking and several others could have been hurt too.  They also vomited everywhere.”

“He’s a baby,” Beouf jumped in. “All of my students are. That’s why they’re my students. Babies stick things in their mouths all the time. High sensory seeking behaviors. They talk other babies into doing silly things, too. Low impulse control and a desire for recognition.”

The clacking of Bankhead’s computer, then, “Does that mean,” Brollish asked, “that you failed in your duties to prevent that behavior?  You allowed the contraband to be snuck in?”

“Yes ma’am,” Beouf nodded. “And if you would like to put that in my yearly evaluation or have that otherwise affect my performance review this year, you have every right to do so and I accept it.”

The Principal seemed so shocked that Beouf would accept a penalty of some sort so quickly that Janet was able to get in, “If it’s about vomiting on purpose, ma’am, then you need to have words with some fourth and fifth graders who chugged pop rocks, pixie sticks, and soda at the Fall Festival.”

A low grunt rumbled out of Brollish as the dusty old processor that was her brain ran the numbers.  “You make a very good point, ladies,” she said. “That is why, effective tomorrow through the end of Thursday, Clark Grange will be suspended.”

No one said a thing.  It could have been so much worse. Still… “Suspended?” I asked. “Why?”

“I am a firm believer in restorative justice,” Brollish said. “You did a very bad thing, and need to face consequences for that action. Because of your status, I can’t have you mopping floors, so I’m giving you time out to reflect on what you’ve done by giving you the maximum amount of suspension for that type of infraction.”

“Vomiting?” Beouf asked, incredulous.

“Vandalism,” Brollish said simply. Okay. Yeah. That was admittedly fair.  “Ms. Grange, I trust you have either enough emergency sub plans and time off to watch him or the means to ensure for his care?”

Janet stood up with me. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Very good. Mrs. Beouf, you may take your student back to the classroom for the remainder of the day.”

I was quickly passed over to Beouf. I’d already forgotten what was going on beneath my waist because of all the adrenaline pumping in me.  “Yes, ma’am.’

“Thank you for your time, ladies.”

We walked stiffly and silently out of the office, out into the reception area, and then circling around into the courtyard.  Janet gave me a final kiss on the cheek.  “We’ll talk more at home,” she promised.

Beouf didn’t say anything till we were almost in the classroom. “Big boy?” she said. “Really?”

“What?” I blushed. “I was trying to sell it.”

“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, bud? Anybody who knows you knows that you don’t talk like that!”  She tweaked my nose and winked. “Good thing Brollish doesn’t really know you, huh?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“I’m Cwawk,” Melony lisped all the way into an obnoxious falsetto. “An’ I’m justa widdle baby. Notta big boy! Ooowooo!”

I gasped in half-mocking exasperation.  “Are you making fun of me for actually talking like my Developmental Plateau Melony Beouf?”

“No, Clark Gibson Grange,” Melony smirked. “I’m making fun of you for doing a bad impression of what you think I want your Developmental Plateau to sound like. You taught preschool for how long and that’s the best you can do?”

“Shut up,” I laughed, and stuck out my tongue at her.  She stopped at the door and stuck hers out right back at me.  “Gibson Grange?” I said.  “What’s up with that?”

“Slip of the tongue,” Beouf shrugged, bobbing me in my messy Monkeez with it. “I don’t normally know people’s pre-Adopted names.  I messed up and self-corrected in the same thought and hoped you wouldn’t notice.” She grabbed the door handle. “Come on, stinker, let’s get you changed.”

“Deal.”

It had been a day of terrible and wonderful miracles.  As it turned out there was still one left.
“Hey, Boss!”

Beouf’s room was in total chaos. The normally well organized classroom was littered with stuffies and toys from every activity center and bit of closet space.  Rather than attempt any form of discipline or instruction, Zoge had just given up pretense and initiated a kind of indoor recess.

Zoge hadn’t been the only certified adult in the room, however.  Standing amidst the chaos, my favorite Tweener surveyed the real life three and four year olds playing amongst the eighteen to thirty five year olds forced to act younger.  What’s more, they were playing with each other.  No shouts of ‘baby’ or shoves or pushes from the bigger children.  No fear or manipulation from the smaller adults.

“Okay kid,”  Chaz said. “Put that block there.”

“But that’ll make it all fall.”

“Exactly!” Chaz snapped his finger. “It’s not good fun until something is falling down!”

“Hold still,” Annie said to a former student of mine. “I haven’t done this in a while.”

“Are these gonna make me look pretty?” the massive three year old asked, while Annie fiddled with hair clips.  

“You’re gonna be the prettiest dolly in all the land. Promise!”

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the Littles were kind of…babysitting?  Not with any kind of actual authority, but the children were following their lead.  Lots of questions of “what next?” and declarations of “follow me!”  Over in the reading nook, Mandy and Shauna were giving an impromptu phonics lesson.  Jessie and Sandra Lynn were working with finger paints and giving an art seminar.

“Tracy?” I gawked. “What in the world is happening?”

“Mrs. Zoge and I decided to combine classes for the afternoon. This place has better toys.”

“But…but…but…” I spread my arms over the entire scene.  If I hadn’t known any better I’d say Ambrose had never indoctrinated them.  “We had a talk after lunch.”

“About what?”

“Treating people the way you want to be treated,” Tracy said. “Gold Rule.  Oh, and about how Littles with Maturosis were very experienced babies, and you could still learn a lot.from experience. That and I promised them extra cupcakes if they were nice.”  Her nose started to wrinkle at my smell.  

“Come on,” Beouf said. She started high stepping over blocks and playsets.. “Let’s get you cleaned up, oh experienced one.”

Peering over Beouf’s shoulder, I saw Tracy bend over and whisper something into Tommy’s ear.  Whatever she was telling my least favorite asshole, he was digging it.

I stared at my reflection in the ceiling mirror, smiling up at myself. As far as Little victories went, this was easily the Littlest.  I’d won with the help of my friends because I’d done something so incredibly stupid as to be nearly suicidal and they all covered for me.  My only punishment was three days off.

“Just like old times,” I whispered.  I was so tired and over the moon with relief that it didn’t even bother me seeing Beouf’s hands unbutton my romper again and expose my ruined diaper.

Beouf grabbed a fresh diaper and started unfolding it.  “What was that?” she asked, her hands already going for the tapes.

From the classroom, shouting so loud that it could be heard over everything else came Tommy’s thundering voice. “ALL HAIL CLARK GIBSON! THE GIANT KILLAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

My change was delayed by a good two minutes with both of us cackling and gasping for breath in the bathroom, Beouf becoming so weak that she fell to her knees and had to steady herself and climb back up to her feet using the changing table’s shelves.

[Personalias]

Chapter 112: Lie to me

(Years and years and years ago…)

I sat at the dinner table, shirt cleanly pressed and buttoned up, hair neatly combed with hair and face washed. I was years away from being able to grow a goatee.  I looked down at the plate in front of me.  Besides the familiar yet detestable broccoli that had been steamed without any cheese was some kind of cut up meat dish. It was pale and pinkish like my flesh, but basted in an unfamiliar brown sauce.  Some kind of chicken, obviously, but not the good kind with the skin coated in breadcrumbs so that it crunched when I bit into it. Turkey maybe?  Duck? Probably not duck. Mother never cooked duck, I just knew it was an option from T.V. and movies.

It was hard to tell when cooking with Amazon portions.  We could eat a single bird for several meals but everything was cut, chopped, diced, and pulled beyond recognition by the time it made it to the plate. Even in a fairly well-to-do Little family, we ate scraps.  Scraps were what would fit in our mouths.

Either we’d cut the food to ribbons and eat it, or an Amazon would do it for us.  Just a fact of life.

The stuff on my plate looked soft and mushy; practically baby food. Gross!  Or perhaps it’d be rubbery and chewy like a dog toy, something I’d have to chew again and again and again, grinding it with my teeth but the stuff never wanting to go down the back of my throat so that I’d have to wash it down with milk just to be able to swallow. Just like with carrots, green beans, and a host of other vegetables my seven year mouth detested unless cooked just right, I’d inevitably tank up on milk, be too full to finish, and then not be allowed to have dessert.

Such was life at seven years old.

It smelled weird, too, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Not burnt, but smokey. “What’s this?”  I asked. I poked some of the meat with my fork and it fell apart at the touch. I recoiled in surprise, as if it were still alive and I’d just delivered the death blow myself.

“Just eat it, Clark,” my father said. He cut at a tender piece and popped into his mouth.  Balding and snowy haired, he wiped his mouth with a napkin after every bite, save when sipping from his mug of beer.  “It’s good for you.’

“I just want to know what it is,” I insisted.  False.  What I really wanted was a burger.  Something that I could grip my hands and bite into.  Something to drench in dairy and ketchup; fill up on juicy ground beef while tasting cheese and condiments.

“Chicken,” Father said.

I poked at the stuff again.  I grabbed my fork and started sawing through a piece.  The stuff melted on the fork, the knife being formality and pantomime more than anything.  “What kind of chicken?” I stalled.  

“It’s swill,” my mother said.  “Now eat it.”

“Debra…” my father looked across the dinner table.

Mother brushed a bit of frizzled red hair out of her eyes. “Ward…” she shot back at my father.  She ate some of the strange concoction and then pointed with her fork.  “Eat your swill, Clark.”

“What’s swill?”  

“Eat it and find out.”

“What is it?”

“Take three big boy bites,” she said. “Then decide whether you like it.”

“Mooooooooom,” I whined.  “I just want to know what it is!”

“Three big boy bites,” she repeated evenly.

I threw my head back and lightly bonked the back of it against the chair. 

I hated it when my parents used baby talk on me. It wasn’t meant to be demeaning, but a reminder; a warning of sorts. Young men and women who didn’t listen to their mother and fathers’ sage advice would inevitably draw the attention of new Mommies and Daddies who wouldn’t let them ever grow up. 

It was the same for table manners, bed wetting, thumb sucking, academics, speech impediments, household chores, and personal grooming. We developed good habits, lest bad ones become permanent in the worst possible ways.  When growing up is literally something you can fail at, it becomes a skill to be practiced like any other rather than something to let happen naturally on its own.  Grow up well so you can find a safe job, save money, get married, have kids, teach them to do the same, and retire safely away.

“I'm just asking a-”

“Do I need to help you practice opening up for the airplane?” she asked.

“Fine!” I shoveled the pulled bird meat into my maw and chomped down.

And smiled!

It was delightful!  The stuff fell apart in the best way on my tongue. The brownish not quite pasty sauce was even better than ketchup and had a hearty sweetness that complimented the savoriness of the meat instead of clashing with it. I actually hummed in delight.  “MMMMMMMMMMM!”

I went so far as to spear some pieces of broccoli so that it’d go down easier with the delicious, delicious stuff!  A young man could get used to this!

“What do you think?” My mother asked, sounding hopeful.

“I love this swill!” I proclaimed.

My father laughed, low and deep, then took a sip of beer. My mother nodded appreciatively.  “I’m glad you like it dear. Now eat your swill.” 

So I did.

We had ‘swill’ twice a month in the Gibson household growing up.  Mother was keen to take note of meals that her picky husband and pickier son would wolf down. It was easily one of my favorite dishes of hers.

I’d never heard the word before in my young life. I’d no context for what it meant.  No clue that it was a synonym for literal slop fed to Erymanthian bred pigs. My mother was just tired from working all day and cooking for an ungrateful son, so she made a quip as her own private joke. 
Calling it what it was to my basic ass wouldn’t have accomplished her goal of getting me to eat the goddamn chicken so she picked a word out of her head; most likely reflective of how she felt I took her cooking for granted.

 When I fell in love with it, the name stuck. It was mostly because she found it funny, but also if I didn’t know what it was I couldn’t look up or find a recipe for it.  Calling the stuff ‘swill’ made it magical in a way, her own special spin on a relatively simple slow cook dish.

Five whopping years later we went out to a barbecue joint and she suggested I try the barbecue smoked chicken. I hadn’t tried barbecue before, and chicken seemed so common to my ever expanding middle school palette. Then she promised me that it would taste like ‘swill’ and it finally clicked.

“About time,” my dad said softly after the Tweener waitress took our orders. “Wouldn’t want him to accidentally tell some Amazon his parents fed him swill.  That could get all of us in trouble.”

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

Wedging the bottle between my good and bandaged hand, I sucked down Beouf’s coffee in my car seat. Janet opted to sign out and go home as soon as the last of the buses had driven off but Melony cooked me up a batch of our afternoon snack and handed it to me on our way out the door. Today’s brew tasted of caramel macchiato and victory.
  
I’d committed not one but two hypothetically grievous offenses, and my friends had used their own crazy backwards logic and ingenuity to drop hints to me so that I was rewarded with a three day vacation instead of sentenced into exile.  

How cool was that?!

Even better was that I was once again a made man in the eyes of the A.L.L and the other Littles in my class.  I’d punched an Amazon in the face, drew blood, and would be back on Friday. I wasn’t even close to a cautionary tale! I was a mother fucking legend! No one there could doubt my credentials! 

It also meant Ivy would be treated better without me having to give away her secret or connive an excuse as to why the most mindfucked among us should be treated with kid gloves. Enough had seen and heard her part in it, and my word would carry more weight than it ever had! 

 Who would doubt the dedication and judgment of Clark Gibson: Giant Killer? Maybe, just maybe, I could weasel my way back into potty training again. Oh nice it would be to walk around without the plastic rustle of a Monkeez or Koddles or Hippobottomuses around my waist. 

I closed my eyes and sucked thoughtfully on what was basically hot chocolate with some coffee grounds mixed in, basking in the combination of future based fantasy and recent triumph.  There was an earthy bitterness that the creamer, sugar, and syrup, all but covered up that made them taste all the sweeter. The hint of coffee, the hint of liquid adulthood, made all the other ingredients better.  

Though there was something to be said about the almost relaxing rush of adding sweetener to something already sweet, like vanilla syrup in fatty goat’s milk. That had been an experience, I’d have to try again, I decided. Good thing Janet had some ready. I wondered if chocolate syrup would have tasted as good. 

Wait a minute…

Something about that wasn’t right. Something was off and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Janet?” 

Janet made eye contact with me in the rear view mirror.  “Yes, honey?”

“I had a bottle of goat’s milk this morning, right?”

“Mhm. Why?”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something had happened this afternoon that really bothered me in hindsight. “No reason.”  

That was a lie, both to myself and her. Deep down, I had the worst feeling of something gnawing at me in the back of my brain.  It snapped at me and snarled, baring its teeth, and I was too afraid to look at it and touch it, knowing it was going to bite me.

I’d seen her pour the goat milk from the carton into the bottle.  Watched her drink some right in front of me.  Just like I’d had Beouf do for her stupid candies.  The water was always right from the tap and the coffee was straight from a shared pot! 

That first sip of milk had been many bottles ago, though; many cartons.  We’d gone through that original carton quickly.  Janet had gotten others since, but they lasted much longer.  Even though she was filling the bottles up regularly out of sight…

“Janet, can I ask you something?”

Janet kept her eyes on the road. “After we get home, baby. We need to have a serious talk.”

I didn’t press it. I didn’t want to press it.

“Okay…”

On Picture Day, Jessica had taken a swig from one of my bottles and almost gagged from surprise. Janet had apologized profusely to her the next day over the phone…

To herself, Janet muttered something along the lines of “Two steps forward, one step back.”  She had no idea.

Even before the weather started to turn chilly, Janet had taken to wearing cardigans. More than once she’d hurried out of the room when Littles started shouting, crossing her arms over her chest and running out the door as if embarrassed…

I needed to break the silence in the car and the building symphony in my head.  “How mad are you?”

 I’d caught myself doing double takes sitting in the grocery cart, wondering if she’d gained weight or if her boobs had always been so big. Same for when we showered together…

The car was slowing down, we were turning into Janet’s neighborhood.  “If you’re asking if you’re in trouble, you better believe it, bud. I still love you,” she added, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna have consequences for what you did today.”

A doctor had written her a prescription; except the doctor was supposedly a pediatrician for Littles; one who had been particularly focused on getting me to breastfeed…

“Almost home,” Janet said, not unkindly.

Every Amazon around me said ‘goat’s milk’ with just an edge of hesitation.  Maybe guilt. Maybe code. Maybe both. They’d spoken with the same care used when adults spelled words they didn’t want children to hear….

“Yup…” I said.

But what happened when the child could spell?  You just made up a different word…

We pulled into her garage. I was unbuckled from the car seat and was trembling on her hip. Janet’s eyebrows knitted together and she placed a warm hand on my forehead. ”No fever,” she said. But she knew something was up.

How long?  How long had something been going on?  Was I even sure something was going on?

She carried me into the kitchen straight away and plopped me down into the highchair.  No restraints this time, just the tray.  She wanted to talk to me and look me in the eye without holding me. This was decidedly not a lap conversation.  She pulled her usual chair and positioned it directly in front of me so that we were nearly at eye level.

“So, a few things,” Janet began with a rehearsed rhythm. “I’m very proud of a lot of what you did today, okay?”

I was sitting as far back in that highchair as I could.  My skin was burning.  With what? I wasn’t sure. “Okay…”

“You’re a very smart boy,” Janet praised. “You knew when to be quiet, when to listen, and when to talk. You were perfect in the clinic and in the office.”

Just this Saturday, Janet had said the Yamatoan word for goat’s milk. Ivy used that same word just before suckling at her mother’s breasts…

“Hmmhmm...”

I’d already had dreams about it like my unconscious mind was trying to scream it at me…

“And you’re a very sweet, sweet, loving boy.  I know you just wanted to protect your old student.”

Fuck!  Why did she have to call Elmer my former student?  This wouldn’t be nearly as difficult if she stuck to the narrative that we’d fed Brollish.  Called Elmer ‘my friend’ or something.  

 “Yeah,” I mumbled.

“And Ambrose? She deserved it.”

Hell yeah she did! Damn it! Why?!  “But…?”

“But what you did was very very impulsive and very very stupid,” she said as sternly as she dared.  Her face and voice instantly turned to putty.  This wasn’t Ms. Grange, the taskmaster of Third Grade. This was Janet. “It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt worse than you were! Do you have any idea how worried everyone was for you?!”

I lowered my eyes to the tray. I gave a half-hearted, sheepish, “Sorry…”

I chewed on my tongue, hoping, daring her to demand that I repeat myself. Call her ‘Mommy’.  Come on Janet. I’ve taken one Amazon bitch today. Two if you count Brollish.  Let me go for the hat trick.

The dark haired woman let down her hair and shook it out, seeming more vulnerable, instead.  “And if things hadn’t gone in just the right way, who knows what would have happened?!  You could have been expelled.  Do you want to be expelled? Do you?”

Back down to the tray.  “No…”  I wanted to get the out of Oakshire Elementary. Just not like that.

“Do you want to get taken away from me because they think you’re dangerous or too hostile for me to take care of?”

I answered that one more readily. “No, ma’am.”

One giant hand draped itself gently over my contritely folded pair.  “Promise me you’ll never do something that stupid ever again.”

I’d already made that promise once today to Beouf.  I’d broken it just as quickly.  “I promise.” This time it felt weightier on my shoulders. Like I was saying more than just words to stop her from worrying.  I think…I think I really meant it this time.

Janet took my hands in both of hers and squeezed them gently, just enough pressure so I could feel it, taking special care not to injure the bandaged one. “Okay.  I believe you.”  She stood up to her full height so that she was once again above me, a judge ready to hand down her sentence.  “You’re grounded.”

I looked up at her, not breaking eye contact.  “Okay.”

“No T.V. until Friday.”
“I understand.”  

“Suspended from school means suspended from friends. No friend visits until Friday. That includes Little Voices”

I twitched. That one stung. “Yes ma’am.”

“No wandering around the house unattended. If you’re not in your crib, you’re with me. Clear?”

“Yeah,” I said glumly.

“Any questions?”

Time to fight.

“When did you switch out goat milk for breast milk in my bottle?”

Right then and there I would have liked for any number of things to happen:  I would have liked for Janet to have lied and told me that I was a silly Little boy with a big imagination. I would have loved for her to try and misdirect me; act confused or use word play. Technically all milk was breast milk. We just only called them breasts on people.  I wanted her to get defensive. I wanted to present my evidence and have it batted away time and time again with easily refutable counter arguments so that I could get mad and shout at the top of my lungs what a hypocritical bitch she’d been; pretending to care about me and listen to me while still withholding basic truths about what she was subjecting me to.   

I wanted her to lie to me; for her to do it poorly so I could catch her. Or maybe for her to lie so well that I might yet believe her and let her gaslight me. Or maybe I could get in on the lie, make it a shared lie.

But like so much in my life, things were not going according to my plan and what I wanted didn’t really factor in.

Shock blasted itself across Janet’s face. She slowly sat back down and took a deep breath.  “A while,” she admitted. “Pretty much as soon as the real goat milk ran out the first time.”  She avoided eye contact.  “How’d you figure it out?”

“I asked myself why you’d have a bottle of goat milk at school and no diaper bag to carry it in.”

“Damn,” Janet hissed under her breath. At a normal volume, she said, “My production has started increasing.  And you were liking it. Seemed a shame to keep expressing and pouring it down the drain.”

“Why’d Beouf mess up like that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Janet said, looking more and more like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. “I haven’t had the chance to ask. I think she thought I’d told you, and we were just using code words for your pride.”

In a way, that’s kind of what they were doing.  In a way, I kind of already knew. I just hadn’t wanted to know for sure.  “Yeah,” I nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Do you wanna know why?” Janet asked.

My shoulders slumped and I slowly shook my head.  “Not really. I think I figured it out.”

“Do you wanna tell me?” she offered.

I took a deep breath through my nose and puffed it out through my mouth.  Then again.  “Doctor gave you pills. You started lactating. You started slipping it in and replacing it until I couldn’t tell the difference.” I paused and shuddered again. “Probably didn’t even plan it like that. Just had the idea out of nowhere and tried it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, grateful for the benefit of the doubt.  “Clark I…”

I stopped her. “Don’t. I was making your life miserable. You were tired. You thought you were helping me. I get it.”

I would have been overjoyed if she had taken the opportunity to list the supposed benefits of Amazon breast milk.  I would have taken snippets about oxytocin, or digestive health, or bonding, or whatever and shoved them right up her nose. No such luck. I was swinging and she was taking every hit right on the chin.

“You’re right.”  Janet said. “I’m still sorry.”

“Sometimes saying you’re sorry isn’t enough.”  I threw back her words right in her face.

My Mommy nibbled on her bottom lip.  “What do you suggest?”

I looked her right in the eye and told her the truth. “I don’t know.”

“I’m not changing your punishment.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s fair. I screwed up.”

“I did too,” she undid the tray, and reached forward  “Hug?”

“No, thank you.”

She took her hands back.  “Sorry.”  She reached forward again. “I’m gonna put you down on the floor.”

“Okay.”

“It’s okay to be mad,” Janet said.

“I know.” I waited until she planted me back down on the kitchen floor.  “I’m just disappointed.”  It was true too.  Both of our faces fell. No tears though.  Just an awkward silence that built throughout the night no matter how much we talked and a growing cacophony in my brain every second we weren’t. I felt an ache inside me that had nothing to do with my guts.

************************************************************************************************************
I paced my crib, gritting my teeth and muttering to myself.  “You can do this,” I grunted and growled. “You can do this.”  

My eyes remained fixated on the baby monitor just out of reach.  “She hasn’t heard you. You’re not hypnotized. You’re not mindfucked. You’ve just been working harder, not smarter.”  The subtle squeaks of the mattress and the loud crinkling of my nighttime diaper filled my ears while my pulse quickened.

“She fucking drugged you!” I said. I gripped the rail with my fingers, and dug my toes into the mattress. Both were done through mittened gloves and feet. Not a punishment, supposedly. Just extra thick jammies for an incoming cold friend.  “Shoved her own bodily fluids into your mouth! That bitch!”

In the far corner, Lion sat passively, completely unimpressed with my theatrics.  She was just an Amazon. Baby crazy to the core with layers and layers of benevolent narcissism.  Should I really feel that surprised? That betrayed? This is exactly what Amazons did. This was just another check on the bingo card.  I was fortunate that she didn’t take me to the nearest public playground and pop her tit in my mouth for all to see and gawk at.

“It’s not like I’d confirmed it! It’s not like I knew knew!  It’s not like if she’d asked I would have said ‘yes’!”

It would have been nice to have been asked though.  Maybe even tempting.

Lion went sailing over the top rib.  “Fuck you…” I growled at the traitor. 

“And this fucking monitor!” I said. “Make me have to call her…call her that word to get her attention.  Even though we had a deal that I wouldn’t have to do that in private.  So much for that!  Typical!”  

To be fair, she had forgotten to tell me that part. An honest mistake.

 JUST LIKE SHE’D FORGOTTEN TO TELL ME ABOUT WHAT THE MILK REALLY WAS!

I planted my feet and leaned hard at the foot of the crib. She wanted me to use the monitor. She was going to get what she wanted.  I now had seventy two hours alone with her to sleep deprive her and break her will and make her existence as miserable as possible.

“Mommy,” I said.  Instantly the tiny light on the monitor blinked on, a beacon in the darkness of the room.  “Mommy, I hate you!.  I hate you, Mommy.  I hate you.  I hate you, Mommy.  I hate you, Mommy. I hate you Mommy..”  

I started building up steam inside myself, smiling wickedly.  “I hate you, Mommy!  Mommy I hate you! Mommy! I hate you! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! I hate you, Mommy!”  

Oh it felt good to be saying it again! To be saying it and knowing that Janet was hearing it! Saying a stupid password so a machine would click on was worth it!  Especially because it meant Janet was hearing the word she most wanted to hear combined with the phrase she least wanted me to be able to say.

“I hate you Mommy!”  I wasn’t whispering anymore. Screw subtlety. Brash impulse had carried the day so far!  I started counting on my fingers and toes, wiggling them through the jammies, keeping track in sets of twenty. My left hand was just starting to hurt again, but that was a plus in my book.

Just like I’d intended, I’d drive that Amazon bitch to the brink of despair and hypocrisy. I’d either keep her up all night or force her to turn a blind ear to me.  She was no friend! She was an addict posing as a caregiver!  But I wasn’t going to give her her fix!

After a hundred rounds, I started marching around the crib. “I! HATE! MOMMY!...I! HATE! MOMMY!... I HATE! MOMMY!” 

I was on strike! I was picketing! Clapping my muffled hands and repeating those words until I didn’t know where the end of one phrase started and the other began.  “MOMMY! I! HATE! MOMMY! I HATE! I!” I was grinning like an idiot and feeling like a superhero. “HATE! MOMMY! I!...HATE! MOMMY! I!”

The nursery door winged open. A familiar outline entered the room and flicked on the light. “Mommy?!”

Standing in front of me was Janet in all of her non glory. Her wet hair from our shower was combed and down and everything about her body language reeked of quiet guilt. She wore loose fitting pink pajamas that almost complimented my fuzzy blue ones.  Her eyes were puffy and tired, her smile nervous and self-deprecating.

“Hey,” she said. “You called?”

I clenched my good fist. Now or never. “I hate you, Janet!” There! I said it! Ha! Take that mental block!  “I hate you so much!”

She stood up tall for a second and then slumped back down. “Yeah. That’s fair.”

“What?”

She walked over to my crib and lowered the rail.  “You sound like you need some company. Would you like some?”

“Janet,” I said, completely discombobulated. “Didn’t you hear me? I said ‘I hate you, Mommy’.”

She picked me up and cradled me so that I was still sitting up.  “I heard you, baby. I still love you, though. No matter what.”

“Nonononononononono!” I started to kick and struggle away from her rapidly approaching bosom. “Not again! Not again!”

The Amazon put me down on the floor, holding my arms immobile just so I wouldn’t hit her.  “I’m  not gonna do that!” she hushed. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m not gonna do that! I fucked up! Sorry!”

I regained control of myself.  “What?”  Had she just dropped an F-Bomb?

“You heard me.”

Back to the game, then. “I hate you.”

“I know,” she chirped. ”That doesn’t change how I feel. I still love you.”

“I hate you, Mommy!”

She picked me up again.  “Do you want to tell me you hate me here, or do you want to keep Mommy company in her bedroom?”

“Bedroom?” I parroted. Why was she taking me to her bedroom? “I…I…bedroom?”

Janet took that for consent. “Okay. I’d like that. Come on.”  She took three steps and stopped beside my stuffie.  “Oops! Almost forgot Lion.”  She balanced me on one hip so she could lean down and pick him up.  “Do we leave him here or bring him with?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s leave him here to guard the room.”

“NO!” I shouted.

“Okay. He can come with us.  We have room.”

“I hate you!” I repeated. “I hate you, Mommy!”

“Yup.”

Nursery gave way to hallway, hallway bled into living room. Living room passed by kitchen and entryway to the dark, peaceful bedroom.  “Mommy! Stop! I hate you!”  I tore Lion from her grasp and clung to him.  More like she handed him over to me, but still…

Janet let out a big yawn. A lioness in the heat of the savannah. “I’m tired,” she said.  “Keep me company in bed? Tell me you hate me while we fall asleep?”  Over by the gargantuan bed, so similar to what I’d slept in back in my old house was the detachable infant cot.  She’d finally put it together.

“I’m not sleeping in that!” I pointed as best I could to the baby bed attached to the real one. 

My Mommy considered it for a second and then responded with, “Okay. How about Lion sleep in it tonight?  You can cuddle with me.”

“This changes nothing!”

“Okay.”

“This doesn’t make up for the milk thing!”

“Agreed.”

“Then why…?  I hate you!”

My padded bum made contact with the massive mattress. So soft! Softer than I even remembered.  “Okay,” Janet said, plucking Lion from me and putting him in the bassinet.  Keep me company?”

“I…I…” I froze.  “Yeah.  Yeah.  Okay.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” she pulled me in close to her and worked her way to the head of her bed, gently tugging me along and tucking us both under the covers, burying us each under the massive duvet on her perfectly made bed.

 The covers!. Heavier than anything than had been put in my crib thus far, but the deep pressure provided a sense of regulation. I was practically swimming! Floating in a warm bathtub where I had no hope or fear of drowning.

“Okay,” she told me softly. “Tell me that you hate me.  I’m ready.”

The warmth from another person’s body!  Another sensation I did not expect to relive any time soon. I’d sat in Janet’s lap and been carried to the point where she was almost a living piece of furniture where my body was concerned, but this was different.

Damn did she smell good, too. Like so much more than lavender and piss. “I don’t want to,” I grumbled. “Not right now.”

“Okay,” Janet said.  “Can I give you one last kiss before I fall asleep?”

This was a trick. Or a trap. Something about her smell was conditioning me. Pheromones or something!  Or the blankets had something in them that was draining my energy away.  Or there was a subliminal message playing in the room that only affected me!  “Okay,” I whimpered. “Kiss me.”

She gave me one soft kiss right between the eyes.  “I love you,” she cooed and then nestled down, cradling me in the crook of her arm right beside her,

No escaping it. Not tonight.  I was hurt and exhausted; physically and emotionally drained. Confused beyond all reason and deep down I just wanted a tiny taste of peace that didn’t feel like burning oblivion or hurting someone who truly, madly, deeply, loved me.

So I closed my eyes.
*************************************************************************************************

Janet’s soft coos and probing fingers woke me.  “Morning, sleepy head.” 

“Hrn?” I groaned.  I turned my head to the side. We were back in the nursery. I was on the changing table.  Janet was still in her pajamas, and my snaps were undone all the way up to my waist.  

Morning birds were singing and the first shafts of sunlight were shining through the window, but it was still incredibly early.  Zoge and Ivy were meeting Beouf at the bus loop right about now.   “Mommy’s just gonna change you and take you back to bed.”

“Huh?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes. “Why?”

“We’ve got the day off. Remember?”

“But…”

Janet ripped the tapes off the landing zone and the cold chill of morning air on urine soaked privates and colder chill of a fresh baby wipe made their way over me, same as every morning. That’s not what surprised me, however. I’d woken up wet, messy, or on the verge of exploding every day since my life had been turned sideways. Yet this was the first time I didn’t remember waking up in the middle of the night to relieve myself. I had legitimately peed myself while unconscious.  I was a bedwetter!

“Go back to sleep, Clark.” Janet shushed me, taping up the fresh diaper so that it was nice and snug. So dry. So clean. So comfortable. “I just didn’t want you to leak. Go back to sleep.”

End Part 9

 

[Panther Cub]

Okay, the goat milk being switched with mommy milk has got my brain juices flowing. Mind if I reference Unfair and this particular practice in a Diaper Dimension story idea I came up with? (Giving you total credit, of course!)

[Personalias]

7 hours ago, Panther Cub said:

Okay, the goat milk being switched with mommy milk has got my brain juices flowing. Mind if I reference Unfair and this particular practice in a Diaper Dimension story idea I came up with? (Giving you total credit, of course!)

If you want?  Sure.  But I don't think I need credit.  It's not that "Mommy Milk" is being sold in grocery stores.  It's that Janet got goat milk and at some point (probably fairly early on) she just started expressing her milk into bottles, and let the cartons/jugs of goat milk create a psychological association and then just keep mislabeling.  

If you WANT that to be an industry in your DD fic, go for it.  Just not what happened here. So you wouldn't be copying me.

And if you ARE copying me, I don't need credit for that part.  That's just an old school "parenting trick" I grew up with dialed up to 11.  "Eat this thing, it's something you like.  Like it, right?  Well it's not really the thing you like, but you wouldn't have eaten the new thing it if I'd told you what it is."   That's like crediting me for putting someone in a diaper.

[Panther Cub]

3 hours ago, Personalias said:

If you want?  Sure.  But I don't think I need credit.  It's not that "Mommy Milk" is being sold in grocery stores.  It's that Janet got goat milk and at some point (probably fairly early on) she just started expressing her milk into bottles, and let the cartons/jugs of goat milk create a psychological association and then just keep mislabeling.  

If you WANT that to be an industry in your DD fic, go for it.  Just not what happened here. So you wouldn't be copying me.

And if you ARE copying me, I don't need credit for that part.  That's just an old school "parenting trick" I grew up with dialed up to 11.  "Eat this thing, it's something you like.  Like it, right?  Well it's not really the thing you like, but you wouldn't have eaten the new thing it if I'd told you what it is."   That's like crediting me for putting someone in a diaper.

Yay! Thanks!

[FloridaKid]

Thanks again for my monthly Clark fix. This goes beyond emotional roller coaster. Sometimes I feel like I’m the cat and you’re teasing my emotions with a laser pointer.

 I knew Clark would end up okay somehow, and I love how you got everyone in on it. 

[CDfm]

Two splendid chapters. 
First I was sure Clark was screwed after taking out Ambrose.  Then when they managed to talk their way out of that mess Brollish somehow managed to produce evidence of the picture day fun.  I thought there was no way he could escape expulsion.  Yet they again managed to get over with a very minimal punishment. 
I was almost hurt when Clark started in again on Janet.  I honestly think he wasn’t very upset to discover he was drinking breast milk so I didn’t think he was still that upset with her.  I really loved the way she handled it.  I almost expect him to ask for some milk when they return to bed following his change.  
I am still absolutely loving the story and can’t wait to read more. 

[Personalias]

9 hours ago, CDfm said:

Two splendid chapters. 
First I was sure Clark was screwed after taking out Ambrose.  Then when they managed to talk their way out of that mess Brollish somehow managed to produce evidence of the picture day fun.  I thought there was no way he could escape expulsion.  Yet they again managed to get over with a very minimal punishment. 
I was almost hurt when Clark started in again on Janet.  I honestly think he wasn’t very upset to discover he was drinking breast milk so I didn’t think he was still that upset with her.  I really loved the way she handled it.  I almost expect him to ask for some milk when they return to bed following his change.  
I am still absolutely loving the story and can’t wait to read more. 

Yeah. Chapter 111 was somewhat informed by my own real life experiences.

Unless they are a proven danger to other students, it takes A LOT for most kids to get properly "expelled" from school. ESPECIALLY Elementary school.  (I'm talking about K-5)  There are exceptions of course (deadly weapons brought from home...being closer to puberty and punching a pregnant lady), but if a 5 year old bites, scratches,  etc. etc. an adult, well...oh well. Suck it up adult.  This is doubly true in Special Ed, which Beouf's room technically is.  If the school system has agreed to give that child accommodations and provide services, it HAS to, and it will only consider alternative placements or expulsion etc. as an absolute last resort.

And part of the reason I wrote Unfair the way I have was with the idea of minimizing stuff like hypno-cartoons, punishment spankings, surgery, etc. etc. because honestly?

1) Probably wouldn't take that much to reduce someone to a baby if you had the kind of societal power/infrastructure and physical advantages Amazons have.  If you can legally pluck someone off the street, change their legal status to "infant" with minimal if any paperwork, put them in diapers and baby clothes that they are unable to take off, are controlling their diet, and everyone else you encounter either looks the other way or is in on the act...

2) If you REALLY believe that Littles are akin to children, then you probably would tend treat them more like children and avoid the more extreme stuff (Not knocking them as kinks or as DD plot devices. I just meant that this story started off as kind of a thought experiment).  People tend want to feel good about themselves, and we don't treat dogs and cats the way a lot of Littles are treated; and if they were people would be CONCERNED.

So chapter 111 was kind of showing the double edge of that sword.  If Clark is legally a baby and has those limitations applied to him, then he should also get at least a measure of those same protections.

And Brollish is Evil (in this author's opinion), but she is nothing if not Lawful Evil and damnit if there's three things Beouf knows and can talk circles around people about, it's the rights of teachers by contract, the rights of children under her care, and what to expect from "Maturosis".  That and Clark ditched his pride at an opportune time and sold the bit. So...technically correct is the best kind of correct.

And Chapter 112 was meant to show a couple things. 

1. Neither progression nor regression is strictly linear.  One step one direction two steps the other and vice versa.  

2. A lot of Clark's hang ups deal with feeling listened to and respected on some level.  There's a reason why he tends to call captured Littles "mind fucked" and "dolls", instead of "big dumb babies."  Babies are still PEOPLE and should be treated like people with thoughts and feelings. The limitations on their freedom is more due to physical necessity and that their brains aren't even close to done cooking.  But the Caregivers are thought to legitimately CARE for the child.

A doll is something that often LOOKS like a baby, and has similar behaviors. (Laughs, cries, opens and shuts eyes, drinks from bottle. Wets. etc. etc.)  But exists for the sole purpose of entertaining and satisfying the person interacting with it.

One is a person.  One is a thing.  

Clark has long believed that Amazons near-universally treat Adopted Littles like THINGS.

Are their exceptions? Yes. Is there cognitive dissonance? Surely.  Ethical concerns? You betcha.  But Unfair wasn't written to be prescriptive and offer solutions.  It's just meant to be descriptive and examine "what would this world look like with these parameters and what would it look like through this character's eyes?".  Nothing more. Nothing less.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.



 

[FloridaKid]

11 hours ago, Personalias said:

Are their exceptions? Yes. Is there cognitive dissonance? Surely.  Ethical concerns? You betcha.  But Unfair wasn't written to be prescriptive and offer solutions.  It's just meant to be descriptive and examine "what would this world look like with these parameters and what would it look like through this character's eyes?".  Nothing more. Nothing less.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I absolutely love this story. We get to see what Clark sees and more importantly feel what Clark feels on this epic journey. Wrap that up in a setting I can fully relate to as a retired elementary educator, and this is a most captivating story. As a hopeless romantic, I want to see Clark happy, and at this stage of his life I hope Janet is the one he finds happiness with. You may work back around to his wife’s story, but for now I’d call happiness with Janet a win.

[something101]

i was just thinking back on when janet made clarks adoption official how clarks ssn was retired and clark felt that he would have to live under the table if he ever escaped, wouldn't he have to do it even if his ssn wasnt retired? He'd still be legally recognized as a baby after all.

 

i don't think clark will escape but i wonder about cassie and clarks reaction

a she is still free( wonder how they will react if they do come across each other)

b she is adopted like clark

c she is adopted and mind wiped

d they never come across each other

also i wonder if clark will realize that escape isnt possible and how he will come to terms with that

[Personalias]

[Part 10: Ascent]

Chapter 113:Staffing Issues

The next three days were a quiet nightmare for me. I was losing my bladder control. It wasn’t that I was completely unaware, I wasn’t incontinent; it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was peeing most times. There were no instances of wide eyed shock at the sudden wet warmth spreading out from my crotch or the feeling of a squish and being puzzled by it.  I knew what was going on with my body.

But unless I was actively thinking about it and resisted the urge, I just peed. Holding my bladder had become less like holding a cup of coffee and more like not scratching an itch. It was possible, but every moment spent not scratching became increasingly distracting to the point of agony. 

And just like scratching an itch, it was very possible to do it while asleep. When I was put down for naps or just dozing, I stirred enough to wake myself up. Once I woke up right as my body was letting loose, but I still counted it.  At night, in a deep sleep, nestled in Janet’s arms? It felt impossible.

It was like Billy had said when we’d first met.  I wasn’t incontinent, I was becoming unpotty trained. Forced practice and the normalization of it all were taking their toll on me.  Imagining myself becoming like Billy who literally could and would push a steaming load into his pants at any given time no matter what else he was doing, I soothed myself by asserting that much control and holding my bowels for as long as I could bear.  

I didn’t bring any of this up to Janet of course.  She wouldn’t have believed me anyways, and if she did she’d no doubt be overjoyed.  I’d finally said that I hate her straight to her face and it hadn’t phased her.  Perhaps the breast milk was doing something to me, but it’s not like I could bring it up to Janet. For all I knew, Amazon breast milk was an addictive drug that caused long term incontinence and brain damage to Littles; but any Amazon cited source would make zero correlation to that fact.  Don’t ask questions if you don’t fully trust the narrator.

Oh yeah.  The breast milk.  How had I not realized? How could I have been so stupid? So blind? So willfully ignorant? Between that and everything else that had happened on Monday, I really did need the three days off just to process.

Those three days were also remarkably pleasant. We slept in and got up with the sun. My liquid diet consisted entirely of water and juice that Janet deliberately poured in front of me and sampled herself each time. My solid diet was finger foods, cut up fruit, corn dogs, massive pizza slices cut into bite size hunks. There was nothing gooey like macaroni and cheese or lasagna; nothing that would be untoward for an adult to eat with their hands; though the steamed broccoli was a stretch. 

Because of her mandate on me not ‘playing’, we went to places where other Littles weren’t likely to be during school or daycare hours. That meant no playgrounds! We went grocery shopping and made a trip to the book store in lieu of the library because of its ‘Mommy and Me Baby Time’ program. 
She even got me a book. ‘Jeepers: Lights! Camera! Ack! Shh!’.  It was pulpy drivel, but a child’s chapter book written at a fourth grade level was leagues away from the illustrated propaganda in Beouf’s room. One afternoon we took turns reading chapters to each other on the couch, guessing what the next dumb fake out would be following the cliffhanger at the end of a given chapter.

For three whole days, I got to hang out with Janet. And I didn’t hate it.  We talked about nothing in particular. We read to each other. We did yoga (the one exception to the television rule she’d put in place).   She didn’t ask me to drink any milk at all, only asked if I wanted to keep talking about it. There were no further trauma incidents such as seeing free Littles set on edge by our presence..

Easiest grounding I’d ever had, to be honest.

The one thing that stung was missing the LIttle Voices meeting that wink. I desperately wanted to regale a certain wonderful nutter with the tale of how I’d busted an Amazon in the nose. There was something Amy had yet to accomplish as far as I knew. It would have been nice to tell her that before Ambrose inevitably found a way to strike back.  Amazons always did.

That Friday Morning sucked.  We woke up on time but were slow to get going. The weather forecast had temperatures in the forties that morning but expected it to rise into the low seventies by the early afternoon. I sat fidgeting in my car seat.  My jacket was too puffy and the jeans didn’t feel nearly baggy enough; like denim tights in some places. Janet had split her morning breakfast shake with me, but the sweetness was artificial and chalky compared to what I’d allowed myself to become accustomed to.  

That made me shudder.

“This outfit sucks,” I complained for the third or thirtieth time.

We turned into the school parking lot. “We don’t get cold weather very often, babe,” Janet said patiently. “You can take the jacket off when you get inside.  You might not even need it by lunch.”

“But then everybody will see the onesie,” I whined.  The navy blue long sleeved onesie with snowflake patterns was adorable.  Adorable was not how I cared to be seen.  

“That’s why you keep the pants on over it.” Janet said.  Damn. She had a point. And it was better than a shirt because there was no chance of my diaper poking out the back.  That was…actually kind of thoughtful.

“Oh…yeah.”

Janet glanced at the dashboard clock.  “Crap! We’re late.”  The sun cresting over the horizon gave hint to what the clock was broadcasting.  Less than five minutes before clock in time.  The buses would be here any minute. Janet zipped around to my door and all but ripped me out of the car seat.  “No time to go to the classroom. Mommy will clock in and hand you off to Mrs. B.”  She practically dashed carrying me over her shoulder; every little bump and jostle stopping me from telling her that she wasn’t supposed to call herself Mommy when we were alone.

There was no time for that argument, however.

The concrete zipped by.  Someone I couldn’t see looking over the back of Janet’s shoulder said “Hi Janet! Hi Clark!” and she hustled through to log in for the day. Three steps in I was able to get a good look at Beouf still holding the door, waving, and giggling.  I waved back. 

 I stood on solid ground for the first time that morning when she sat me down and started punching in her number. It was not to last, however.

“Boss!”

My eyes lit up. My whole body pivoted towards the front office’s mail room. “Tracy?!”

Tracy stood there, eyes wide with excitement, holding an armful of papers.  Better yet, she was dressed like a normal person again, and not a gross parody of a western school marm! She took the stack of worksheets fresh off the printer and bits of announcements and mail and placed them on a nearby desk.  “Boss!”

“TRACY!”

“BOSS!”

The Tweener got down on her knees and flung her arms wide. I took the cue and waddle-ran all the way into her arms, giving her the biggest possible hug I could manage, even with the puffy jacket limiting my mobility.  There were soft quiet ‘Awwws’ and one disgruntled ‘Hmmmph’, but I didn’t care this time.  My feet were on the ground but I was on cloud nine.

“How ya been, sir?”  Tracy asked, her voice soft and gentle.

“Three days?” I boasted. “I could do three days standing on my head.”  I neglected to mention my recent nighttime problems because well…there’s no good way to bring that up.  “You?”

Tracy stood back up, but she kept gushing. “It’s been like a vacation. The substitute that came in has been phenomenal!”

“Substitute?” I said. “You mean Ambrose hasn’t come back yet?”

The first bell rang right as the buses were starting to motor up. I felt Janet’s warm shadow over me.  “I need to go unlock my classroom,” Janet spoke over my head. “Can you get him to Mrs. Beouf please?”

Tracy gave a cheeky thumbs up. “I think I can manage, ma’am.”  

Two full lips planted themselves on the top of my head.  “Bye bye, Clark. Have fun today!”  

I slapped my palm over the spot that had been kissed like I was swatting at mosquitoes. “Mommy!” I squeaked. Alas, she was already power walking out the side exit towards the courtyard.

Tracy arched an eyebrow. “Mommy?” 

“Shut up,” I growled, embarrassed at myself.

My assistant held her hands up in defense. “No judgment. No judgment. You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes. Say what you gotta say.”

I tried to move beside her and reached up for her hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Tracy eyeballed the front door.  “Are you kidding? It’s cold out there and our buses are dead last. We can wait a few.”

Oh wow!  Neither I nor Tracy had ever dared to push our luck by waiting inside after the bell. We’d bitch about it, sure, but we never acted on it.  Something had emboldened Tracy.  I kind of liked it.

“Okay,” I said back up to her. “So…substitute?”

“Oh she’s amazing!” Tracy said. “She’s an Amazon, but she’s really good with the kids. Playful but doesn’t goof around. Talks to them like they’re people, but isn’t a drill sergeant. Really knows her stuff!  Emily’s mom came in on Tuesday and this lady just talked circles around her and redirected her so that she was happy and gone in like five minutes! Almost like how you and me would do it.  I think even Beouf kinda likes her.”

Wow, again. I leaned back from surprise.  Tracy did not give compliments this lightly.  They were just falling out of her, too. There was no way she was using any kind of office politics language in case we were overheard, (and we were obviously being overheard).

“Oh,” I sighed. “Good.  What’s her name?”

The door to Brollish’s office opened and closed.

“Starke. With an ‘e’ at the end.”

Starke…Starke…Starke…I didn’t know any teachers with that name. Not that I could expect myself to know every teacher, as necessarily anti-social as I was.  Light footfalls signalled an approach.

“That doesn’t sound like any of the regular subs. What’s she look like?”

Tracy pointed towards Brollish’s hallway.  “Kinda like that.”

The lady who walked out of Brollish’s office might as well have been a Little made large: Skinny and straight almost to the point of pre-pubescence.  Her hips and breasts were still bigger than any Little woman’s, but proportionally speaking, she was a twig.

Her short, light brown hair was let down and neatly combed, and she was dressed functionally yet professionally; much like how Beouf often did- with clothes designed for ease of mobility and comfort so that one could get down on the floor and play with students as much as teach them at their desks.  Her red and puffy winter jacket was almost an exact replica of my own, possibly because they had been bought from the same store.

There was a joyful gleam in her eye and a smile on her face. She waved.  “Morning, Tracy! Morning, Clark!” 

“Hey, Miss Starke!”  Tracy waved back. Then she took a second and looked back down at me. “You guys know each other?”

“She’s my babysitter,” I said almost under my breath.

Jessica pranced our way. “How are you buddy?” she cooed down at me. “Ready to play and learn?  Still sleepy? Grumpy?”  Tracy reached down and gave my hand a squeeze.  Then Jessica said to her.  “Oh, sorry. His Mommy is my best friend. I’m kind of his honorary aunt. Ms. Grange. Do you know her?”

“Yeah…” Tracy nodded. “I do. We used to all meet up first thing in the morning and chat before work. Me. Mrs. Beouf. Ms. Grange.  Clark.”  This had all become incredibly awkward, and once again, the Amazon was the one who had no idea. 

“That sounds neat! Maybe we can start doing that again once I’m settled in.” The tips of her fingers shot up to her mouth in self surprise. “Oops! I didn’t mean to invite myself. No pressure of course. No pressure. Just I love Janet, and I’ve really liked working with you so far and…”

“We?” I parroted. “So far? Settled?  Jessica…Auntie Jessica, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Jessica paused and then broke out in a mile wide grin. “I got the position!”

Tracy gasped and let go of my hand.  I did too. So many conflicting emotions roiled up inside of me.  Janet’s best friend was teaching my kids.  That meant that they were infinitely safe in comparison. It also meant I might get babysat less often. But it also meant I’d been replaced…again…by another giant.

A shrill harpy’s cry rang out.  “WHAT?!”  Raine Forrest leapt out of the receptionists chair so fast that it fell over backwards.  This was doubly impressive because being a wheelie office chair it shouldn’t have been able to do that so easily.  “MS. AMBROSE GOT FIRED?!”

All eyes were on us and Forrest as she stomped over to us, huffing and puffing. Aides, volunteers, teachers running late, parents trying to beat the school bus because their kid forgot to take something with them: every one of them was either looking right at us or doing their absolute best to not look at us.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Jessica answered sheepishly. “I was just told that the preschool teaching position was open and asked if I wanted it.”

Despite being within easy speaking distance of us, Forrest did not stop screaming. “THAT’S NOT FAIR! THAT’S NOT FAIR AT ALL!”

Tracy spoke up. “She hit a student. Multiple times. And me. What was supposed to happen?”

“HE ASSAULTED HER AND SHE DEFENDED HERSELF!” Forrest roared. “WHY IS SHE FIRED AND THIS LITTLE BASTARD GETS TO KEEP HIS FREE DAYCARE? HIS MOM ISN’T THAT GOOD OF A TEACHER!”

That lit a fire underneath Jessica.  “Excuse me,” she said, getting between me and Forrest.
“That is not how we talk in front of parents and students, that is not how we talk about our co-workers or their children, and that is certainly not how you talk about my friend and my godson.”

It wasn’t as forceful or as fuming as Janet’s previous dressing down, but there was a power to it.  In the way the two women carried and conducted themselves in that moment, Raine seemed like a tantruming toddler and Jessica was the adult firmly putting her foot down, telling her the behavior was unacceptable.

Fury in Raine’s voice condensed. Not as loud but just as angry. “Oh. So you’re one of them.”

Unbeknownst to us, another monster had entered the room.  “Miss Forrest.” A quiet, raspy, skeletal voice called out.  “Perhaps we should talk.”

And the volcano erupted all over again.  “FUCK YOU!” She shouted at Brollish.  

Brollish looked like she’d been struck  “I beg your pardon?” 

“FUCK! YOU! THIS MANIPULATIVE SON OF A BITCH HAS CAUSED PROBLEMS ON THIS CAMPUS FOR YEARS! LITERAL YEARS! AND INSTEAD OF GETTING RID OF HIM YOU FIRE A PERFECTLY GOOD TEACHER!  HE SHOULD BE AT NEW BEGINNINGS RIGHT NOW GETTING TAUGHT A LESSON INSTEAD OF PLAYING IN BEOUF’S GLORIFIED DAYCARE!”

“See me in my office, Miss Forrest. Now.”

“NO!” Forrest stomped her foot.  “FUCK YOU! I QUIT! I CAN’T WORK HERE ANYMORE! I QUIT!”  She stormed out the side exit, slamming the door behind her.

Everyone else froze.  “That was unfortunate,” Brollish said. No one moved. “Get to your stations. Students are already unloading.  Have a nice day.”  The room sprung back into action as if Brollish had pressed the universe’s play button.

Jessica took a knee and knelt down to my eye level. “Sorry you had to see that, kiddo,” she said. “You okay?”

Tracy took one look at my awestruck face.  “Oh, he’s more than okay. Trust me.”  I was doing everything I could not to burst out in joyous maniacal, frantic, idiotic laughter; the kind of laughter that would risk me wetting myself even if my body hadn’t started slipping.  Both my newest and oldest enemies on campus had been removed in the space of five days.  

Bonus points: Ambrose had been replaced with someone who was as much her antithesis as it was possible to be and still count as an Amazon. Double bonus was this was someone who knew me and was inclined to humor me.  If I couldn’t look after my students directly, I could at least have the ear of the two people who were.  Tracy liked her too, meaning she’d stick around.  

Best. Grounding. Ever.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m very okay.”  I reached up and took both ladies’ hands. Tracy took the worksheets in her free arm and we walked out into the chill cold just as the final two buses were pulling up. “Hey Tracy?”

“Yeah?”

“Does Emiliano have any experience in telephone reception?”

If Tracy had been drinking coffee she would have spit it out. “It’s a good thing my hands are full or I’d smack you, you Little booger!”

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, Jessica puffed out a bit of laughter.  “Okay. Yeah. You know Clark, alright.”

 

Chapter 114: Through Windows Once Closed

I watched my reflection while Beouf tugged down the sides of my fresh diaper, making sure the fit was nice and snug without risking the tapes ripping.  “Almost….done!”  She smiled, satisfied at her work. I let out a small sigh now that I was no longer encased in my own pee.

A long tired yawn bellowed out of me. “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHW”

Beouf reciprocated the yawn while she boosted my hips and buttoned the snowflake onesie up between my legs.  “Don’t start, baby, you’ll get me doing it.”

I frowned, the b-word still stinging despite the affection. “Okay, Granny.” I joked.  “Do you want me to pull up your rocker and quilt for you?”

She stuffed the old balled up diaper down into the pail behind her. I’d needed the change since before the buses, but we were running behind so I volunteered to wait.  No sense in Annie or Billy risking a rash because they were stuck in filthy pants for an extra forty five minutes to an hour when I could just wait ten and get relative privacy to boot. 

“Don’t even joke, young master Grange,” Beouf said. “My granddaughter has been keeping me up the past two weeks.  If I could fit, I might curl up in one of those cribs with ya.”  She fiddled with my jeans, turning them this way and that, checking for leaks.  “Pants on?”

I stared up at the ceiling mirror.  I looked absolutely ridiculous and adorable.  Putting some jeans over them wouldn’t alter that overmuch. That and Beouf still had the heat up to full blast. “Pass.”

“Deal.” She folded up the jeans.  “Shoes and socks?”

I wiggled my toes. “Why? It’s Friday. Might as well start it right.”

Beouf shook her head but had the biggest glowing smile on her face.  “Suit yourself.”  She unfastened the strap across my chest and set me down off the changing table and onto the cool tile floor.

“Jealous?” I asked.  

“Maybe a smidge,” she admitted. “I don’t think I could pull the look off like you can.”  She tucked my grimy socks into my sneakers and placed them atop the folded up jeans.  “More just really happy to see you like this.”

Turning down the jeans seemed like a really bad idea right then and there.  “Like what?”

“Happy.” She made a gentle shooing motion towards me.  “Now come on. I wanna get some coffee, not spend all afternoon in the bathroom.” 

I crinkled out and around the classroom, approaching Beouf’s kidney table in a wide arc for no other reason than I felt like it. In contrast, Beouf made long rigid strides for the coffee pot, moving at right angles and letting her tree trunk limbs carry her past my meandering gait.  The resulting differences in tempo made it so that I was sitting down right as she was finishing shaking up my bottle and placing it in front of me.

“To the end of another week,” I raised the bottle filled with mocha in a mock toast.  

“To the end of another week,” Beouf parroted me.  She gave a conspiratorial scan of the classroom as if searching for eavesdroppers.  “And the end of Ambrose.”

For once I blushed and smiled yet felt no need to hide it and no shame in expressing it.  We clinked glasses and sipped our drinks in a moment of comfortable, amicable silence. I exhaled and threw in, “Bonus points for Forrest.”

“Hmmm?” Beouf blinked and swallowed her drink.  “Beg pardon?”

“Forrest quit,” I said. 

“That’s what that was this morning during the buses? She quit?”

I took another pull from the bottle, feeling smug as anything. “Yup.”

Beouf covered her mouth and pounded the table top lightly in place of laughter. “Oh my gosh! That’s awesome!”

“You’re welcome.” I said. “She literally cited me being allowed back as the reason she was quitting.  That and Ambrose getting canned.”  

Beouf held her palm out and I slapped it. “Don’t you ever do anything like that ever again, though,” she quickly said. “Ever. I mean it.  Scared the daylights out of me and everybody else.”

I tried using my superpower of not rolling my eyes, but it failed from lack of practice. “Yes Mrs. B.”  Hadn’t we already had this talk? What did she think I was?  Oh…oh yeah. She kinda did…

“I mean it, Clark.” Beouf said.  “I was scared. We all were. Ivy was close to hysterics when she first got back here.”

I put the bottle down. “What?!” 

“Zoge told me she kept mumbling something in Yamatoan about how it was her fault. Do you know how she would have felt if you’d have gotten expelled?  How I would have felt?”

The mental image of poor delusional Ivy and poor delusional Mel crying because I got sent to New Beginnings was enough to shake even me. We’d just re-reached a place of understanding again. Ivy and I had even less time as friends.  The fact that my exit from their worlds could affect them so; I hated to admit it, but it was touching.

I dug my fingers into my face and dragged them down into an exasperated mask. “Fine, I promise!” I said. “Sheesh.”

“Ivy and you are not going to be allowed to be next to each other in line for the rest of the year,” Beouf said firmly.

“Calendar year or school year?”  

“Clark!”

“Sorry! I just had to ask.”  The joke did not land. My unexpected victory had been her emotional crisis.

The silence turned awkward.  My gut grumbled from the coffee and I made a mental note not to start pushing right then and there. If I could I’d do it in Janet’s car right as she was pulling into the neighborhood so that nobody’s eyes were fixed on me while I did the deed. There was no urgency or feeling of strain save for lamenting that planning to void into my pants had become routine and that the presented (and expected) alternative was worse.  I wasn’t that unpotty trained…

The awkwardness passed and Beouf resumed sipping her coffee. “How was your Friday?”

“Kind of boring, actually,” I admitted. “No arguing or yelling or drama or surprises.” The last thirty minutes has just been the A.L.L. lounging behind our usual oak tree. No one wanted to play or make fun of the others.  It was fucking grating.

“Thank goodness,” Mel chuckled. “Monday was enough excitement for me.” 

“No, seriously,” I said. “Maybe we could spice it up every once in a while. Have Fun Fridays or something.  Change it up beyond just recess at the end of the day?”

“You want more recess?”

“Maybe,” I pondered. “Like free play inside before lunch or a special game after naps. Might be nice to have some structure.” My mind leapt to the silly yet creative games used to pass the time at Little Voices meetings. I’d own these losers at ‘Clark says’.

“I give you structure the entire day,” Beouf gestured comically to the visual schedule on the wall. “Now you want more structure during the one time of day when I cut you monsters loose?”

I leaned forward on my elbows.  “When you put it like that…”  I covered my lips and muttered. “Kinda…?”

“Are you trying to get under my skin, or do you genuinely want me to come up with games for you to play?”

“Two things can be true…” I grinned.

“Kids…” Beouf said into her mug.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” she said coyly. Before I could make a comeback, she piled on, “If you want to make a lesson plan and try to teach your classmates some things out there I have no objection.”

“Lesson plan?” I stopped blinking. “Seriously?”

“Nothing official,” Beouf said. “Just if you want to teach your friends some new games, I’ll be happy to learn with them so I can referee.” A wink sealed my fate. “But you have to put in the work and get me the rules first so I know you’re not just being silly.” She took a moment to wag her finger at me. “No battle tag, either. Too much diving and tackling. Not appropriate.”

A chance to teach! To lead and present! I pursed my lips together. “You’re playing me and I don’t even care.”

“Sign of a good mentor/mentee relationship,” Beouf finished her coffee. “Both parties walk away taking advantage of each other and not caring.”  It meant everything to me that she called it mentor/mentee and not teacher/student just then.  She put her mug down and let out another loud yawn. 

“That grandbaby really keeping you up?” I asked.  I got a tired nod in reply.  “I thought Mom and Dad had to deal with the midnight feedings. Isn’t that what parents do?”

Beouf bellowed out another yawn. “Doesn’t mean I don’t get woken up,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll give her the bottle just because I know I”m not going back to sleep.” She smacked her lips and her eyes started to drop. “Two weeks now. That baby has the second worst case of colic I’ve ever seen.”

“What was the first?”

Her eyes opened back up and a wicked wry smile jotted itself across my friends lips. “You.”

“Oh you bi…” I sputtered and self-corrected. “You witch!”

Melony stuck her tongue out at me.  “Walked into that one, bubba!” she tittered.

“I have so many swear words right now,” I grumbled. “All the swear words!”

Our back and forth was interrupted with the gentle clicking of a doorknob turning. For the first time since September I looked at the backdoor of Beouf’s room opening and my heart didn’t fill with dread.

The sound of two women laughing like school girls preceded Tracy’s head poking in the room.  “Hey,” she said to the space between me and Beouf. “Mind if I come in?”

“Sure,” Beouf waved the teacher’s aide in.  I did, too.  

Tracy came all the way in, and the noise crescendoed with her entrance. “Janet and Jessica,” Tracy thumbed behind her. “You’d think they were long lost sisters who hadn’t seen each other in forever.”

The slight distance between the classrooms was just enough so that I couldn’t make out the individual words, but the patter was loud, boisterous, and above all happy.  It was nice to hear happiness coming from that room. “Yeah,” I sighed.  “They get like that, sometimes. I don’t get it.”

Janet was the last to find out about her bestie’s new job.  When they saw each other at the bus loop after school she started squealing and jumping like she’d won the lottery.  Jessica responded in kind. I was given a quick kiss and handed straight back to Beouf. I’d become an afterthought.  After so long feeling like an obsession, being an afterthought was really cool.

In Tracy’s hand was something off-black, flat, and rectangular. She had it tucked under her arm, and positioned away from me like she was trying to hide something.  The door shut behind her with an audible thud, but was punctuated by even more laughter pounding out behind her.

Beouf stood up out of her teacher chair.  “Okay,” she said. “Now I gotta know what’s so darn funny.” She looked down at me. “Wanna come?”

Tracy and I exchanged glances. She fidgeted. Uncomfortably.  “Not really,” I told Beouf. “I’ve got a feeling someone’s coming over for dinner. I only wanna hear the jokes once.”

“I don’t mind staying with him,” Tracy offered.

Beouf held her hand up and out.  “Tag out.”

“Tag out.” Tracy agreed. They high fived and Tracy got out of the way so Beouf could go socialize with her fellow giants.  

“Sup,Tracy?” I asked.

Tracy waltzed over to the kidney table and shifted the dark rectangle behind her back.  “Hey, Boss. Got something for you.”

“What?” I asked.

“A present.” Tracy said. Then she tacked on.  “And a thank you.  And an apology.”

“An apology?” I asked.  “For what?”

My old assistant pulled out a kids’ seat next to me.  Even sitting down, she was bigger than me. “For this,” she gently brushed my cheek with her fingers.  “And for not being honest with you.”

I turned my head with the graze of her finger tips, feeling the slap all over again.  “It’s okay,” I told her. “You saved me from getting humiliated in front of our kids.  We’re even.”

“You punched a bitch in the nose and took a beating!” Tracy exclaimed. 

Our gazes met.  “And you saved me.”  When she didn’t reply, I took the initiative. “We’re even.  We’re more than even.”

Even more awkward silence as we sat there. It was only broken when I remembered what I was wearing and shifted and crinkled uncomfortably in my seat.

“Anyways,” Tracy said, bringing the rectangle back around and laying it down in front of me. “I had an idea.  Emiliano already went back to work in Elizabeton. I can’t scope out the daycares and whatnot like you wanted.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I get it.”

“But…” she brightened. “I can give you something almost as good.”

“Which is?”

Like a model on a daytime game show, she waved her hand over what she’d been hiding behind her back. It was a touch screen tablet, obviously well used. The screen still had smudges on it and there were tiny bits of brown gunk along the power and volume buttons where it had been pressed and dropped ad nauseam   The paint on the home button was smudged to oblivion.

“This isn’t mine,” Tracy assured me. “Got it used from a friend.”

“Okay…” I said.  “What is it?”

Tracy started the tablet up, and punched in a passcode of ‘1-3-5-7-9’.  “It’s a gaming tablet,” she said. “Last night I downloaded a bunch of fun games on it. No hypno games or anything that’s gonna make you uh…you know.”

A weak smile muscled its way up over my skull. “Huh. Neat.  Something to do over the weekend. Thanks, Tracy.”

“I already got Janet’s permission to give it to you,” Tracy said proudly. “She’s got no problem with you playing any of these games.”  

I skimmed the icons that flooded the screen. None of them seemed particularly babyish. Nothing that was designed to teach me shapes or colors. One had a skull and crossbones. Another had a stick figure inside a sniper’s crosshairs.  “Thanks.”  

“Fair warning,” Tracy told me, “she can access the parental controls and change the passcode if she wants. I already showed her and Miss Starke how to put a timer on it to limit your screen time so you can’t stay up late or anything.”

“Ah,” I said. “That makes sense.”  The small amount of satisfaction I was drawing from this was rapidly diminishing. 

“Yeah,” the Tweener repeated herself. “The parental controls really sold it for her.”  A subversive counter melody entered the cadence of her speech. “She was really happy about that feature.”

My eyes squinted up at her.  “Is there anything my Mommy would be happier not knowing about?” I asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.  Officially no idea.” 

Then my old partner in crime showed me exactly what she had no idea about.

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

I felt like a million bucks that night. A nice hot shower. Fresh fuzzy pajamas and powder to minimize chafing.  New sheets in the crib and a freshly laundered Lion. It was a wonder what a few minor creature comforts could do after a long and dreary day.

Janet leaned over the crib railing, her curvaceous form still wrapped in a towel, her hair lightly dripping. Both of our heads smelled of sweet honey shampoo.  “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in Mommy’s bed tonight?” she coaxed.  “I could lay with you until you fell asleep and then move you to the cot until I came back.”
“I’m okay,” I replied as politely as I could. “Thank you, though.”  I was doing everything I could not to stare at the object of my desire.

Subtlety was hardly my strong point and Janet knew it. “You just want to stay up and play with your new toy.”  This was neither a question, nor an accusation.

I sucked on my lips. “Kinda,” I admitted.  “Snuggle tomorrow night? Stay up late tomorrow and sleep in Sunday morning?”

“Oh, so we’re staying up late, now?” Janet taunted. “Someone has gotten very used to being suspended.”

“It’s very easy to stay up late with an extra source of developmentally appropriate stimulation,” I offered.  “If you’d like to negotiate it so that I take an extra long nap tomorrow, I’m amenable to that discussion.”

Janet tilted her head and crossed her arms. “You just want to stay up and play with your new toy, don’t you?”

I immediately averted my gaze and pretended to be interested in the dinosaur crib sheets.  “Yes ma’am.”

My Amazon caregiver feigned exasperation in her sigh, but she was radiant. “It’s a good thing you’re cute.”  She moved Lion out of the way and grabbed the tablet from its hiding place and punched a code in.  “We’re going to have to go over some of these games this weekend. I do not like how some of these icons look.”

I stood up and flashed her full puppy dog eyes.  “But tonight?”

Janet handed me the tablet back.  “I’ve got a timer set for thirty minutes,” she said. “After that it’s locking you out and changing the code. Then it’s right to slumber town with you.”

“But I can play?” I asked.

She sighed. “Only because it’s a weekend.”

Good enough for me. “Yay! Thank you, Mommy!”

My Mommy shuddered in delight at hearing her self-given title come out of my mouth so earnestly. She’d conditioned herself far more than she’d conditioned me.  “You’re welcome, baby boy.” 

I leaned forward and accepted the kiss so that she’d hurry out of the room.  “Good night, Clark. I love you.”  
“Good night, Mommy,” I called back.  There was a pause, but she flicked off the lights and closed the door.

Half an hour.  I had half an hour to do what needed to be done.  Not because I’d be locked out of the device, but because Janet would surely double back to take it out of my hands once I’d had my playtime.

I pressed the home key and backed all the way to the locked screen.  Thanks to the parental controls, in half an hour the code would go from ‘1-3-5-7-9’ to a secret permutation that only Janet knew.   

Fine by me. I didn’t need it.  There was a special code that Tracy hadn’t divulged to my teacher, my Auntie, or even my Mommy.  One that only I knew.

With deliberate slowness I pressed in the secret sequence. ‘1-0-5-6-5’.  Alpha-numerically, if 1 and 0 were read as ‘10’, I would have just spelled out ‘J-E-F-E’.  Tracy had wanted it to be B-O-S-S, but it was too many digits.  

The screen blinked, and then the tablet booted back up. This time, all of the games were gone and only three heretofore invisible insignias remained: In my hands, I had an internet browser and a VPN and a settings app to turn my tablet into a wireless hotspot.

I held my breath as I tapped on the icons and saw the spinning loading signal. A second later, the browser opened. Fingers trembling I typed in the web address. ‘Mistuhgwiffin.net.’  It loaded! 

For several seconds I just stared at the glowing screen, gazing in happy disbelief. No longer would my sources of information, my knowledge, or my voice be confined to what Janet or the others shared with me or decided what was worth listening to. 

 Now I could communicate incognito with Littles on the other side of the crib bars. Listen to rumors. Give warnings. I could do more than just wish and hope and plan. I could do more than wait for openings and opportunities. I could coordinate. I could create my own opportunities. I could stretch myself out so much farther than the Oakshire Elementary Maturosis and Developmental Plateau Class or the local Little Voices meetings.  

I was back!
 

[Moon3ye]

These were probably the 2 best chapters for Clark in a long time.

Especially that he can now communicate with the outside world.

Maybe now he can contact Cassie's family to find out what's going on with Cassie.

Also how Forrest is gone now.

To think the firing of Ambros was wrong well good riddance.

Nice that Tracy is staying and the new teacher is an ally.

[Samriis]

Gotta say, I'm a huge fan of this work and I'm really happy that you keep updating it here.  Thanks again for a wonderful story!

[CDfm]

I have really been looking for this to be updated.  I was thrilled when I saw the new chapters.  Work forced me to wait a few extra hours but it was worth it.
Things at school almost seem to be going too good for Clark right now.  I expect that will again be changing soon.  
The really big news is having the internet access again.  Clark might even be able to plan an escape.  He should definitely be able to contact his in-laws and maybe even track down his wife.  I would really like to find out the fate of his wife. 
I am absolutely loving this story and look forward to the next update. 

[Personalias]

6 hours ago, CDfm said:

I have really been looking for this to be updated.  I was thrilled when I saw the new chapters.  Work forced me to wait a few extra hours but it was worth it.
Things at school almost seem to be going too good for Clark right now.  I expect that will again be changing soon.  
The really big news is having the internet access again.  Clark might even be able to plan an escape.  He should definitely be able to contact his in-laws and maybe even track down his wife.  I would really like to find out the fate of his wife. 
I am absolutely loving this story and look forward to the next update. 

I gotta give Clark some "W"s every now and then.  If not, the story is less interesting, y'know?  I like him because even as a 'baby' he has agency and wants and needs and if the Amazons NEVER listened to him, or had prepped for EVERYTHING he might do, then there wouldn't be much of a story beyond a series of humiliating events.

[CDfm]

8 hours ago, Personalias said:

I gotta give Clark some "W"s every now and then.  If not, the story is less interesting, y'know?  I like him because even as a 'baby' he has agency and wants and needs and if the Amazons NEVER listened to him, or had prepped for EVERYTHING he might do, then there wouldn't be much of a story beyond a series of humiliating events.

And you are doing a masterful job of writing it. 

[Personalias]

Chapter 115: A New Religion

The whole debacle started like any other day. That’s usually how it goes, isn’t it? Things were just peachy-keen and dandy; life was all sunshine and sparkly unicorn farts then an acorn fell on Chicken Little and the sky was falling in. 

Well, my life of diapered damnation and forced babyfication was hardly that despite what my nursery and Mrs. Beuof’s room looked like. And all the bright colors and happy smiles on my vast collection of infantile toys. Despite all my trials and tribulations and acts of rebellion- in particular that rather traumatic stunt of my escape attempt- I was now resigned to my diapered doom.  There were worse fates than being Jane’s baby. 

That morning I lay on my changing table, cooing up at Janet and flopping my hands about in an infantile manner that made her smile. Yes my puppet you will dance to my tune. If I can’t escape, I was still determined to be a master of my fate to what little extent I could. A few bashful smiles, soft cues and fluttering of lashes or pouty lips and puppy dog eyes and I could bring almost any deranged baby-crazed Amazon to their knees. The only way a Little could get anywhere in this clown world was to embrace their babyhood to make the Amazons capitulate. Ironic; the only true freedom for a Little was being a baby, thus reinforcing the Amazonian pseudoscience theory of Maturosis and creating a negative feedback loop. Typical.

Janet giggled and baby talked to me as she changed me into a fresh diaper. Some of her purple hair fell out of her messy bun. Purple. You read that right. I wasn’t fully resigned to my fate; I still had some rebellion in me. I had put hair dye in Janet’s shampoo bottle. Luckily for me, she hadn’t noticed yet. Don’t ask where a Little baby like me got hold of hair dye. I have my secrets and I can’t give away ALL my tricks. 

Janet dressed me and carried me on her hip to the kitchen for breakfast. You know the drill: highchair, bib, mushy baby oatmeal mixed with a generous squirting of breastmilk while Janet got delicious bacon, eggs, and toast spread with butter and jam. So not fair! And so typical. She turned the small kitchen TV on to watch the news. It was a Saturday, and she still wore her fuzzy pink robe over her pajamas. 

You think Janet would at least put something good on. Like cartoons. Instead she put the boring news on. An anchorperson blathered on about the weather forecast. I scrunched my nose up as Janet zoomed a rubber tipped baby spoon through the air. 

“Open wide for the airplane my wittle Clarky-warky.”  Janet added sound effects as the spoon zig-zagged in comical fashion towards my mouth. 

I smiled and opened my mouth like I was eager for that bland mush. Happiness flickered deep in Janet’s eyes as the Mombie Monster in her got her baby fix. I slammed my lips together at the last minute and the spoon ran into my clenched teeth. Mush smeared all over my mouth, cheeks, and chin. Some of it dripped onto my already messy bib. I saw the frustration on her face and I giggled sweetly up at her like this was a game. Which it was. But not the game she thought we were playing. I’m a master manipulator, and I was playing level 4D chess mind games. MWAHAHAHHAAA! And yes, that evil laughter bit was totally necessary. 

The news switched to footage outside a courtroom, where a group of icky cops kept law and order outside a courtroom as two opposing groups with waving signs and angry faces shook their fists at each other and shouted each other down. The case was controversial; some tweener who fought for Little and Tweener rights, for justice and equity, had been caught red-handed on multiple surveillance tapes faking her own sizist based crime. One side of the crowd, a bunch of grown up Littles and Tweeners and good-thinking Amazonian allies, said she did it to draw attention to the struggle and unfairness they faced every day. The other side, full of Amazons of course, agreed completely with the Littles. The tweener did it for attention- her Maturosis was acting up; she wanted attention, she craved and needed help, and this was her way of asking for it. There were no problems in society aside from Little and Tweener attitudes, and her having to fake a size-crime was proof of it. We all know what the Amazon-only court was going to rule as the fate of that poor Tweener, don’t we? The court did have a Little judge, but she was just an Amazonian puppet, a traitor to all Little and Tweener kind because of course she sentenced the poor Tweener to rehabilitation. At some place as horrible, awful, and triple dipple evil as New Beginnings. If this was a movie, there would be a scream of horror and a flash of lightning. 

I hardly paid attention to it.  You think I would care. But I don’t; I had my run. I’m already doomed to diapers. Let the outside world burn for all it affected me! Part of me wanted to acclimate to this diapered life, if only it was more fair. Another part of me wanted to burst into flames and burn everything to the ground. 

One of the upsides to being babified was the delicious breastmilk.  Having breasts full and engorged with milk also gave Janet an impressive set of hooters. They were friggin huge, almost but not quite as big as the jugs on the famous country singer Polly Darton. And I got the pleasure of gazing upon them and suckling from them every day.  You jealous yet?

One of the changes to my life was I’ve been breast feeding more. Like a lot. I was mostly breastfed. With a stunning set of milk-spewing honkers like that, can you blame me? 

A flash across the TV screen as Janet successfully spooned mush into my mouth.  I thought about spitting it out or spraying it all over her face, but I didn’t want to overplay my hand. Discretion truly was the better part of valor.  She smiled and cooed at me. Her robe slipped open and her magnificent milk filled mounds jiggled like jello as they spilled out of the low cut lace neckline. 

“Breaking news. We interrupt your daily news with urgent ground breaking news.” The screen flashed wildly, showing bridges all around the world shuddering and collapsing. All the major cities all around the globe, buildings tumbled. Earthquakes shook; volcanoes erupted, and tsunamis struck. The world shattered as we knew it. 
Our light bulbs didn’t even flicker. Was this a joke?  Janet paused as she scooped up another spoonful. 

“Catastrophes, one after the other. Everyone, stay calm and get to safety if you can. We have no updates, and no clue what is going on.”  The anchor person's voice was full of panic and fear at all these supernatural disasters happening at once. But their cameras remained steady, the feedback from various drones still streamed uninterrupted. Maybe that was due to Amazonian technology? It was really super duper advanced stuff. It even impressed me, and I hate Amazons. Except for Janet and her jugs. 

Just as suddenly as the disasters started, they stopped. Cities were toppled, in ruins. The globe was brought to its knees, humbled in moments, in hours. The turbulent seas stilled. Then out of the water, all around the world- from rivers and oceans- rose strange creatures. The cameras zoomed in on them, as if even the technology couldn’t resist the briny allure. They wore dark robes and were Amazon sized. No Little or Tweeners anywhere.  

The anchor person’s speech was cut off; static filled the air, making me and Janet both cringe. The robed figures came clearer into view. You couldn’t see anything except loose wet cloth and tall Amazonian shaped lumps that lumbered oddly. And tentacles.  Tentacles of all colors waved from under the hoods. 

Did octopussies become sentient? And more importantly, what was the plural spelling of octopus? Octopi? I like octopussies better. It’s almost a dirty word. Hehe. 

Garbled speech, like a fish trying to talk human, replaced the static. It was horrible speech. Something so foul and blasphemous it nearly killed me on the spot. But then, to blaspheme, one had to have something to blaspheme against, didn’t they? I got nothing, so I guess it really wasn’t blasphemous at all. But it was horrible and painful to listen to, but I’m a kind hearted man so I won’t torture you with trying to recreate it here. 

“Behold, O’ unbelievers! Unworthy infidels! Your salvation is at hand! Turn now from your wicked ways and repent! We’re not here to destroy you! No, indeed! We bring tidings of blessings and great joy from the depths. The Old Ones, the Deep Dwellers, the Elder Gods who have slept for eons have heard your pleas and your cries and they awake! The Mighty Cthulhu sends us now as heralds to usher in a new era! One of peace, prosperity and equity for all! But first you must submit and accept their briny rule as the natural rulers of this world. They wish to return and rule like they did eons ago!”

Another garbely fish voice interrupted.  “Or you could, like, resist. And we’ll just kill you and feast on your flesh. I’d prefer that. It’s more fun. And tasty.” 

“Shut up Gurga!”  

A scuffle broke out then the first fishy voice was back.  “Ignore that. Submit! Save yourself!” 
 It went on like this for a while and honestly it was boring so we’ll skip this part. You think Amazons with their amazing superior Amazon tech would fight right back? But no, as soon as they all heard the fishy words they dropped to their knees like they were hypnotized.  Just like those cruel Amazon monsters liked to do to us poor Littles when they turned us into mushy brained babies. 

Janet stared slack jawed, entranced by that awful voice. It was so awful and horrible it was beyond my powers of description. Her eyes glazed over and she completely ignored me. If I could undo these evil restraints, I could bust out of this highchair, climb down, and walk right out the front door unhindered. Heck, I could probably take my wet diaper off and throw it at her face and she wouldn’t notice, she was so lost to the voice’s thrall. 

I thought about it, I really did. But I knew there was no way I could ever undo these safety straps. After my escape attempt, Janet was taking no chances. I cooed. I giggled. No reaction. I cursed Janet out. And still she stared at the TV. 

I leaned forward, grabbed the bowl, and flung the mushy oatmeal at Janet. It hit her square in the face. She was a statue, transfixed. “JANET! OI, JANET! MOMMMMYYYYY?” That one ALWAYS got a rise out of her. 

Nothing. The bowl slid down her face and clattered to the floor. Oatmeal smeared all over her; her face and her purple hair.  “MOMMMYYYYYYYYYYY I LOVE YOUUUU.”  Ha. Resist that one, Janet. I know she couldn’t. 

She did. 

There was a polite knock on the door. 

The locked door unlocked itself, and a robed figure glided in. The stink of seawater preceded it. It was huge, even for an Amazon. The tentacles waved about like feelers of a predator sniffing out its prey.  They were orange and had little suction cups on the underside. They looked slimy, too.  Was it going to eat us? Terror gripped my heart. 

A dazed smile slowly spread across Janet’s face.  “My love. Welcome home.”  She raised her arms as if wanting to hug the vile abomination. 

Webbed hands came out of the billowing sleeves and pushed back the hood. And there he stood. 

I stared. My blood ran cold. My diaper warmed, terror squeezing my bladder.

Mark. 

At least, that thing had been Mark. Once upon a time. What? This was like being in some horror movie. A horrifying horror movie. “M-Mark? Wha? How?”  I mumbled out through numb lips. 

The creature- Mark- smiled at me.  He was humanoid. Like, he looked mostly human. But also fishy and octopus too. The tentacles hung from his face like some deranged beard. And he had webbed fingers. But other than that he was still the same douchebag asshole that tried to steal Janet from me!

“Oh, I found a new religion. The true religion from the beginnings of time. The Great Tentacles! Thou shalt love the tentacles!!”

“Oh, I do! I do!”  Janet breathed in a husky bedroom whisper. Like it was turning her on.  Then she ran to Mark, into his arms and they kissed and embraced in such a vile act of obscenity not even the great animators of Yamatoa would make a hentai anime out of it. 

It took all my strength not to puke.  

Mark smiled at me.  “Daddy’s home! He’s here to stay! We’ve come to restore natural order to the world. Us who worship the tentacles on top, of course. Then, Amazons. Tweeners and Littles shall all be put to their rightful place; in diapers!  You’re where you belong, and you’ve been a naughty boy! Clarky-warky is in for a spanky-wanky!” 

His tentacles waved threateningly at me like they couldn’t wait to spank my bare bottom. 

[CDfm]

Okay, I know you have to be waiting for some reaction and then make an announcement.  I will not spoil it.  I will wait for you.  
I will say I enjoyed the chapter and loved the idea.