Dawn Domain

[Personalias]

You are about to enter another dimension. A realm somewhere between delight and delirium, where anything can happen, but only when you least suspect it.  Where light and darkness overlap, and much madness dances with divinest sense:  Read on and you will be entering The Dawn Domain.

Tara Anderson was an average young woman on her way to pick her baby up from daycare. Like most people who would use the term “average”, it was less a descriptor of her capabilities and more a comforting non-committal adjective to describe her own sense of complacency.  For people like Tara Anderson, “average” merely meant that the day before would be startlingly similar to the day that followed.

Little did she know that this day would not be a day like any other; not for Tara Anderson.  For en route to daycare, Tara Anderson’s minivan had just taken a sharp left turn into the Dawn Domain.  

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she mumbled to herself.  Rush hour traffic was never quite so infuriating as when someone was waiting for you at your destination, and Tara’s baby (not to mention the daycare staff) would be growing more and more impatient with every passing minute.  

At twenty-four, motherhood had come upon Tara unexpectedly.  Having a baby really did change one’s life completely, Tara was finding out. Overnight, the young woman’s life had metamorphosed from lazy days hanging out with her best friends, to the thankless task of taking care of someone much smaller and more helpless than she.  

Diapers and baby food were expensive, forcing her into a vicious cycle where her only time for relaxation after work consisted of sneaking in a few hours of sleep between feeding, playtime, and diaper changes.  And being a working mother meant she had to abandon her child each day so that she could afford to keep paying for necessities as well as, ironically enough, continue the routine abandonment. 

 Such was life. 

A yawn blossomed up from Tara’s throat.  The past night she’d tossed and turned in her bed, unable to get a good night’s sleep despite a seemingly perfect number of pillows and blankets.  It wasn’t nightmares or discomfort that had plagued Tara as much as the uneasy inability to shut her brain down and she’d been plagued with a mind that wouldn’t stop barraging her with lists and the nagging feeling that she’d forgotten something.  Worrying about the baby certainly didn’t help.  If she could find the time (and she wouldn’t) she’d need a nap later; even if that would perpetuate the sleepless cycle.

When her van was at a stoplight she reached for an extra black iced coffee macchiato with foam on the bottom and three pumps of vanilla syrup.  When sleep was not an option, coffee became a young mother’s best friend.  She completely drained the bottle in a few quick gulps and sat it back down in the cup container.  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she muttered again, as if saying so might compelthe stoplight to change colors sooner.

Another audible yawn prompted her to reach for the coffee again.  Perhaps, magically, she mused, she could get at least another gulp out of the dregs.  She reached for the bottle and stopped, her hand freezing mid reach.  Bottle?  Why was she drinking her coffee out of a bottle?!  A sudden green light and honk of a car behind her caused Tara to keep her eyes on the road and lurch forward towards her ultimate destination.

When she looked again, the milky bottle had been replaced by a normal disposable coffee cup.  No rubber nipple; just a hard plastic top like a sippy cup; not unlike what toddlers and older babies drank from.  Such things were fairly common in a world that was phasing out straws.

Tara shook her head and laughed at herself.  She had to.  For a second there, she’d been so tired she could have sworn that she’d been sipping from one of her baby’s bottles.  Not a Mommy for even a month, and she was already experiencing sleep deprived hallucinations.  Yay, life goals!

Sadly, her coffee was well and drained by the time the minivan pulled into the daycare’s parking lot.  Eyes closed from yet another yawn, Tara reached down to unbuckle her seatbelt; and found nothing.  Frowning, Tara opened her eyes.  Was she drunk all of a sudden, too?  Maybe there was a little more Irish in that coffee or something.

Upon closer examination, there was a belt buckle, however it was not on the side. A strange sense of deja vu overcame the young lady.  Instead of being by her hips, the release button was right between the legs of her denim jeans, with two separate buckles snaked over her shoulder and then fastening themselves over her chest.  Rather than a seatbelt, Tara found herself in a harness.  

Was she in a car seat?!

Car seats, however, could not be blinked away so easily.  Within seconds, she was out of her car and on her way inside.  Babies couldn’t get themselves out of car seats.  “Must’ve nodded off,” Tara told herself, smoothing out her plain pink t-shirt just in case.   Nothing to worry about.  Nothing at all; though the thought of calling a cab did cross Tara’s mind.

On her way in, Tara looked back over her shoulder.  The car seat wasn’t on the driver’s side.  It was right where it should have been.  Good.  Good.  She was just tired.  Not crazy.

The daycare was almost empty when she entered, signalling her presence with an annoying cheery beeping rendition of “You Are My Sunshine”.  If there was one thing she would have changed about the daycare it was that darn annoying chirp every time someone crossed the threshold.

“Good morning Mrs. Anderson,” a daycare worker with black flats greeted.  

Tara squirmed at that, even as she approached the daycare worker.  It was “Ms. Anderson”, but people still assumed that a mother had to be married.  “Good morning,” she said, calmly enough.  “I’m here for my baby.”

A note of light confusion entered the other woman’s voice.  “Your baby?”

Tara looked back over her shoulder.  This was the right daycare, wasn’t it? How embarrassing would that have been to be so tired that she’d shown up to the wrong place?  But Tara recognized the hand stenciled alphabet running along the wall.  No.  This was the right place. Her baby was here.  But if so, what was wrong?

“My baby?” Tara clarified.  “Kind of looks like me?  Red dress? Long brown hair in pigtails?”  She tried somewhat and failed to hide her indignation. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. Seriously, if they’d lost her kid Tara was going to be homicidally furious.

Another daycare employee, this one in white sneakers, stepped into the conversation turning interrogation.  “I know which baby she’s talking about, ma’am” she said.  She turned to face Tara’s direction.  “Your baby got VERY dirty,” she told Tara.  “We’re cleaning her for you, now.”

A wave of relief washed over Tara.  “Oh.”  They were giving her baby a bath.  That made sense.  Children were such dirty little things, and Tara had already learned how many different ways a baby could dirty itself, (and that wasn’t even counting diapers).  “I’ll wait, then.”

And so Tara did.  Patiently. Too patiently.  As the minutes ticked on, the young lady kept looking up from her crossword jumble.  What COULD she do with the letters g, x, three y’s, and a z? The constant beeping and booping of “You Are My Sunshine” was getting on her nerves too.  Impatiently, she swiped the letters away and looked up from her increasingly failed attempts to unscramble a nonsense word.

 Little by little, more people trickled into the daycare, each looking for their own little one.  Again and again, the annoyingly cheery rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” beeped and booped as more impatient parents filed in.  Tara huffed.  What was taking so long?  Were ALL the kids taking baths?  Was there some kind of pool party going on in the bathroom?

She was about to go find one of the employees and give them a piece of her mind when she felt a strange trickle beneath her.  It felt faint, and far away, but strangely familiar.  A warmth blossomed and spread between her legs and beneath her.  

A surprised gasp leaked out of Tara’s lungs as a puddle was leaking out of her bladder.  “I’m peeing!” she realized.  She had heard that new moms sometimes leaked when they sneezed, coffee was known to go right through people, but this was ridiculous!  “Just like a…!” She paused.  “Just like a…?”  There was no puddle, beneath her, however. 

Tara looked behind her and all down her legs.  Nothing.  No dark spots on her jeans.  No wetness on the carpet.  Nothing that would indicate that a full grown woman had just had a sudden “accident” as they were called.  Within moments, she didn’t even feel the warm wetness between her legs that had prompted her to think the unthinkable. Had she put a liner in her underwear when she got up that morning? She couldn’t remember. Rolling her eyes at herself, she let out a quiet groan.  She definitely needed sleep.

New to-do list: Pick up her baby.  Go home without crashing.  Take a nap.

A woman with two pink sneakers broke Tara out of her self-induced trance.  “Are you waiting for your baby?” she asked.  Tara nodded.  “Me too,” the other parent said.  “Come on,” she gestured.  “Let’s go hang out.  We can all wait together.”

At this point, anything was better than figuring out her stupid word jumble.  With a wave of her hand and a wooden clatter clicking in her ear, Tara followed.  Might as well socialize, she figured.  

The blue dress didn’t match the other woman’s shoes at all, but it was pretty just the same.  What Tara hadn’t needed to know was that the newcomer’s panties matched her shoes and were decidedly frilly.  Tara bit her lip and looked away when her new friend bent over to pick something up...just not fast enough.  She wondered if the other woman knew just how short her dress was.

What happened next was another shock, perhaps greater than even the strange feeling between her legs.  The woman in blue was pulling away from her, and fast!  It was as if the girl were sprinting when all Tara could do was walk. Except her legs weren’t moving any faster than Tara’s. It was the same strange gliding effect

Try as she might, Tara couldn’t keep up.  “WAIT!”  Tara called out. “WAIT! YOU’RE GOING TOO FAST!”  Even that calling out for help sapped a bit of stamina from Tara.  She felt like she was barely moving,  shouting her lungs out, and in the middle of an olympic marathon all at once.

Her new acquaintance did not stop.  She did not look back or turn her head; deaf to Tara’s cries for aid.

Not everyone was deaf, however. “Here, let me help.”  Gently, two hands guided Tara over to a chair.  Internally, Tara blinked.  “Chair” wasn’t quite the word for it, but it was the only one that came to her.  It was more like the deformed lovechild of a hammock, and office chair, and something her Mee-Maw might use at the nursing home.  Tara felt...better, actually.  The frame supported her weight when she stood and steadied herself, but the wheels on the bottom also allowed her to buckle a bit and just glide and kick along like a chair at work.

“What is this?” Tara asked the daycare attendant in the white sneakers. 

 The attendant gave her a soft smile.  “Just something to help with fatigue,” she said.  “Do you like it?”

The relief was palpable.  “Uh-huh,” Tara replied.  “It feels good.  I gotta get me one for my house.”  It was absolutely exhausting being a young mother.

“I’ll make sure to pass that along,” the attendant said before walking away.  

Newly supported, Tara went to join the other parents socializing while their babies were sorted out.   The wheels were squeaking slightly beneath her as she turned the corner.  “Tara!” her new friend in the blue dress and frilly pink panties exclaimed.  “So glad you could make it!” 

Three other women sat at a fine table, sipping from dainty tea cups. “Thanks,” Tara said, feeling funny about it.  If she was so glad Tara could make it, why didn’t she help, or at least wait up?  And how did she know Tara’s name?  Tara couldn’t remember making any kind of introduction before.  Was she THAT sleep deprived?

 “I love your...thing.”  A woman in a singlet and tutu said.  “Very nouveau chic.”

“It’s not mine,” Tara said.  “But thank you.”

“Tara’s waiting for her baby to get cleaned,” Blue and pink said.  “So am I.  I thought it’d be okay for her to join us.  Maybe sip some tea with us?”

That got an unexpected round of cooing squeals  “Awwwwww!” Tara blanched, not quite scowling at the condescension.  “Seriously,” A girl in a yellow sundress remarked, “that is totally cute and nice of you to invite her.  Considering...” 

 Tara winced at that.  This is why she didn’t make friends with other Mommies. Too much social politicking.  Too much cliquing and jockeying for position instead of being actual friends.  Tara missed her own friends, even though she had less in common with them, recently.

And yet...societal pressures being what they were, Tara did not choose to take that time to excuse herself.  Even if she felt she could have left, it would do nothing to cure the interminable boredom she’d been plagued with.  That and she was thirsty.

Another woman bounced around to Tara’s side.  “Tea?”  She offered a tiny saucer that looked more fit to be a shot glass.  This is why hoity toity people only sipped at tea; lest they run out too quickly.

“I’ve already had enough caffeine, thanks.”  Tara replied.  “I’m here for the…”  Tara stopped when something caught her eye.  A nearby bottle of Gatorade looked inviting.  She was feeling awfully dehydrated for some reason.  Must have been the coffee.  

Without waiting for further invitation, Tara reached out and began guzzling it down. Whether this was polite or not did not occur to her, and the others didn’t seem to mind, encouraging her, in fact, to drink it all up.

Tara liked the juice-like drink, both in terms of taste and quantity.  It made it so that she didn’t have to talk to the other adults; and made it infinitely easier to pass the time.  When she was halfway through the bottle, that strange feeling, not unlike peeing, came over her again.  It was more pronounced this time, and the feeling of wetness didn’t immediately vanish, but Tara chose to ignore it and keep drinking.

“So I told Princess Unicorn that Lollipop La-la and Mrs. Muffinhead were..-”

Tara put down her bottle.  What in the world were they talking about?  They sounded like crazy people!  Was she drunk?  Tara put down the sports beverage in order to ask a question and it was that time that her stomach chose to let out an absolutely air vibrating belch.

The others stopped talking.  “Huh,” A tea-drinker said.  “Rude!”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” the woman in blue, said.  “She can’t help it. She’s just a baby.”  No mocking tone or condescension in the woman’s voice.  “Babies can’t help it.”

“That’s true,” another said.  “It’s not like Tara’s a big girl like us.  She wears diapers.”

If Tara had had any gatorade left she would have spit it just then.  “Excuse me?!  Is that supposed to be some kind of code or something?”  Just because she wore only jeans and a t-shirt didn’t make her less-than compared to these strangers!

 “Hey!” Another woman said.  “I wear diapers!”

“Yes,” yet another replied, “but just because you wear diapers doesn’t mean you’re a baby.  It just means you’re not potty trained yet.”

Tara raised her hand.  “Excuse m-”

“Even I have an accident sometimes,” another girl spoke over Tara.  “And I’ve been in Pull-Ups the longest.”

They were ignoring her! Out and out ignoring her!  “EXCUSE ME!” Tara yelled.  “I’m trying to ask a-”

“Oh, do you need me to get you another ba-ba?” The woman in the blue dress asked.  

Tara scoffed.  This was some either some grade-A bullshit or some grade-A gaslighting.  “Ba-ba?”  Tara followed her not-quite friend’s gaze down to her hand.  Like a snake, Tara’s mouth practically unhinged itself.  In her hand was not a gatorade bottle, but a baby one.  One that had fit perfectly in her hand.

The hexagonal cylinder tumbled onto the floor.  “Oh, I’ll get it for you!”  For the second time that day, the woman in the blue dress  turned around and bent all the way over, flashing her panties at Tara.  Unlike the first time, Tara didn’t try to avert her gaze out of a sense of politeness or propriety.  Those weren’t panties…

They weren’t diapers either, but they were something no Mommy, no grown-up of any kind should be wearing.  Pull-Ups shouldn’t be that big…

And they shouldn’t be wet, either...

Entrapped as she was in the not-quite-chair, Tara didn’t retreat as much as she backpedaled away.  Screaming her lungs out, she could only hear the muffled replies of the strange women who looked more annoyed than shocked.

“What’s her problem?”

“Babies, go figure.”

“Maybe she’s wet?  Don’t babies do that when they’re wet?”

Tara had to get help!  There was something wrong here!  Very wrong!  “Teacher!” she yelled,  “Ma’am!  Someone! Anybody”  She didn’t know any of the daycare workers’ names!  Why didn’t she know anyone’s name?  They took care of her baby for chrissakes!  Why couldn’t she remember their names?  

An unfamiliar face stopped her.  “Whoah whoah whoah!” the new person tried to calm her down.  “Tara.  Are you okay?  What’s the matter, honey?”  Tara didn’t quite recognize this person’s face, but the voice sounded familiar.  Looking down over the contraption’s tray, Tara saw a pair of black flats.

AN EMPLOYEE! A DAYCARE WORKER!  SOMEONE WHO COULD HELP!

“Miss,” Tara panted.  “Something’s wrong!  Something’s very VERY wrong!  I don’t know if the women in there are crazy or if I was drugged by something in the bottle...I MEAN Gatorade or...or…”  Tara was very quickly running out of words.

“Tara?” the employee asked, a frown of confusion on her brow. “What women?”

Tara pointed back the way she came.  “THE WOMEN IN THE TEA ROOM!”  Obviously!  She hadn’t made it that far away from them.  If Tara listened hard enough she could even hear them giggling and resuming some nonsensical Wonderland conversation about Dutches Moo-Moo and Fairy-Blossom-Sugar-something-or-another.

“You mean the playroom with the little plastic tea set?” the nursery worker asked.

“Yes! WHATEVER! THEM!  THOSE WOMEN!”

The lady in the black flats bent over and looked Tara in the eye.  “Tara,” she said.  “There aren’t any women in that room.  I just looked.  Just some little girls.”

“Little girls?” Tara repeated, sounding far more incredulous than she’d meant to.  “No!  There are full grown women over there!  And they’re wearing tutus and and..and...pull-ups.”  The last word came out in a conspiratorial hiss.

“Sweetie,” the daycare worker said. “Trust me.  I just checked a second before you went in there.  None of the grown-ups are in there. Just some girls playing pretend.  They’re only a bit bigger than you are!”

Tara just shook her head, dumbly, feeling little bits of hair brush up against the side of her cheeks. This person wasn’t listening.  No one was listening!  She had to get away!  She had to get out of here!  

She tried to get away, but it took only a single hand to stop the chair, hammock, brace hybrid- no..the baby walker-in its tracks.  This?  This was impossible!  Tara shouldn’t be in a baby walker!  This lone woman shouldn’t be able to stop her dead in her tracks!
Yet here she was...
 
“LET ME GO!”

 “Just a second,” the daycare worker said, her voice as calm as Tara’s was panicked.  Tara felt herself lifted out of the baby walker, a strange feeling of helpless vertigo overcoming her.  
She wasn’t a baby!  She wasn’t a baby!   Babies didn’t have babies!  Tara felt her throat almost close up as the stranger began to grope between her legs. “Wet,” was all that the woman said.

Faster- so much faster than Tara thought possible- she was carried across the daycare’s floor and found herself staring up at the lights.  “What are you doing?!”  Tara demanded as a strap was pulled across her chest.  Her chest!  She had breasts!  Babies didn’t have breasts!  Wasn’t that proof?

The daycare worker seemed to ignore her as she went over to a nearby shelf.  Craning her head up, Tara gawked as the woman opened a bin.  Even though Tara couldn’t read (why couldn’t she read?) she recognized an eerily smiling face on the front.  She’d seen it in the mirror this morning.

It didn’t take long for Tara to realize what the white rectangular thing in the daycare lady’s hand was.  And what’s more, she could see through the translucent plastic of the bin that there were plenty more diapers where that came from.  

“I don’t need that!”  Tara insisted.  “Those aren’t mine!  They belong to my baby not m-!”
While Tara begged and pleaded and tried to rationalize the insanity she was being drenched in, the caregiver had hooked her fingers into the elastic waistband of her jeans and yanked them down to Tara’s ankles, just short of her velcro shoes.

Looking past her shirt and down at her own crotch, Tara let out a gasp of disbelief.  Not only was it evident that beneath her shirt was the swollen and bulging padding of an incontinence garment, but it was also evident that she hadn’t been wearing a shirt.  Shirts didn’t come together with snaps between the legs.

Overcome with existential panic, Tara remained silent while the onesie was unbuttoned and shimmied up over her hips.  The baby diaper- and that’s what it was; adult diapers didn’t have cartoon decorations all over them- drooped and sagged away from her once it was unbound from her pink onesie. 

Unable to do anything else, she remained silent while the other woman changed her; biting her nails nervously for comfort.  Like most any woman her age, she didn’t want to have her diaper changed; to have her privacy and personal space so brazenly violated.  But she didn’t want to knowingly stew in her own excrement, either.

A fresh diaper might feel nice, too.  Tara had to slam her eyes shut in a vain attempt to block out that oddly familiar and very babyish thought.

Her eyes weren’t the problem, however.  Her sensitive skin felt the not quite refreshing cold of baby wipes.  She still felt the sopping wet padding be slid out from beneath her while her legs were lifted up to the sky.  Tara still heard the light crinkling of a fresh disposable diaper being unfolded, and felt it slipped beneath her.  She felt the softness of the fresh floof as her weight was lowered back down and smelled the fragrance of the baby powder as it was dusted onto her bottom.  She tasted the slight saltiness of her thumb as she continued to suck on it.

Eyes back open, Tara witnessed the completion of the transformation.  The diaper being taped snugly around her hips.  The onesie being snappedand holding the diaper firmly against her.  Her jeans being yanked back up over the onesie.  The strap unbuckled, and Tara sat up on the changing table, she looked exactly as she had before when she’d gotten out of the carseat.  Yet something felt distinctly different...and it wasn’t just the fresh diaper.

“What?  What’s going on?” Tara asked.

Picking Tara up, the daycare worker in the black flats replied,  “You just got your diaper changed.  It happens all the time to baby girls like you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tara whined.  But once again, her words fell on deaf ears.  The world zoomed by in an instant, and Tara found herself on padded ground surrounded by soft white mesh walls.  

Just like that, the woman was off, leaving Tara alone with another girl her age; this one barefoot with her diaper on full display beneath a red t-shirt and matching ribbons in her hair.  “Hi, Tara!”

Tara’s back was against the meshof the playpen in an instant. “Hah duh yuh knuh muh num?!”

“Huh?”

Tara yanked her thumb back out of her mouth.   “How do you know my name?” she repeated. “How does everyone know my name here?!” 

The girl seemed confused.  Considering that she herself seemed perfectly comfortable showing her diaper off, that seemed completely possible.   “Um...I dunno. We play all the time…?  Also we play the name-game at least once a week.  Tara-tara-bo-bara!”

“I do NOT play here,” Tara almost shouted.  “This is a daycare!  Daycares are for babies!”

The more obviously diapered girl nodded.  “Uh-huh…”  It’s as if Tara had just said that the sky was up or that water was wet.

“But I’m not a baby,” Tara put special emphasis on the “not”.  “I’m a Mommy!”

Rebecca (Crap! How did she know the girl’s name was Rebecca?) pointed past the playpen wallsand towards the daycare’s front entrance where Tara had checked in.  “Then who was that who brought you in?”

“Who?”

“The grown-up lady that the other grown-ups were calling Mrs. Anderson.”

“I’m Mrs…!” Tara stopped herself.  No she wasn’t… The daycare attendants hadn’t misidentified her.  They hadn’t been talking to her at all!  They’d been talking to her mommy!  Mommy’s didn’t pick up their babies first thing in the morning!  They dropped them off!  At daycare! 

Everything was clicking into place in the worst way imaginable. Tara had just completely ignored or forgotten the person who’d actually been driving the minivan; the person who’d unbuckled her from her car seat; the wonderful woman who’d carried her all the way into the daycare and then set her down on the carpet!  Even the word jumble she’d been playing with pass the time had been just random alphabet blocks none of the other babies had wanted!”

Confused and bewildered, Tara practically slammed the back of her head against the mesh sides of her confinement.  “But I’m not a baby!” It was quickly becoming her mantra.  “I’m not dressed like you!  You’re just wearing a t-shirt and diaper!”

Rebecca rolled over onto all fours and crawled closer to Tara.  “Yeah, cuz that’s what my Mommy dressed me up in today.  Your Mommy dressed you up in that.  You’re still wearing a diaper.  You’re still crawling around...cept when you’re in that walker.”

“I am NOT a crawler!  I can-!  I can-!...” But she couldn’t.  That’s why the girl in the Pull-Ups seemed to be going so fast and why Tara had gotten so tired.  Crawling was hard work.  That’s why, even now, she realized she was thinking of grown-ups based on what types of shoes they wore instead of hair or eye color; shoes were the first thing she got to notice about somebody.  She was used to looking at the world from the carpet up.

“No...no, that can’t be right.”  Tara said.  Gripping the top rail of the playpen she pulled herself up into a sitting position. “See?  I can stand!”

Rebecca smirked.  “Now let go.”

To say that it did not end well for Tara would have been an understatement.  Within seconds she lost her balance and ended up like a turtle on her back.  The padding on the playpen floor and the fact she landed rear first before momentum carried her all the way over broke the fall.

 “I’M NOT A BABY!”  Tara slammed her fist and kicked at the ground to emphasize her point. 

Looking up at her playmate, Tara caught Rebecca rolling her eyes.  “Yeah, because that’s totally something the grown-ups say.”  The girl punctuated her point with a brief raspberry. Tara hated to admit it, but her old playmate was right.  All the evidence was pointing towards Tara not being nearly as big as she thought she was.

“I’m twenty-four!” Tara protested!  “Way too old to be a baby!”

“Twenty-four?” Rebecca echoed.  “Do you even know numbers yet?”
Tara realized that she didn’t.  Twenty-four was just the biggest sounding number she could imagine.

“But what about my baby?”  Tara was feeling about as pathetic and well...babyish as she sounded just then.

From above them, the daycare worker with the white sneakers leaned over.  “Tara, look what I’ve got for you!”  In her hand was a rag doll. It had a red dress on it and it’s brown yarn hair had been woven and bundled up into pigtails.  It’s nearly featureless face had perfect for Tara to imprint on and imagine that it looked just like her.  “Fresh out of the washing machine.  All of that paint you dipped it in yesterday came right off!”

“BABY!” Tara squealed as she reached up and cuddled it to her chest.  Even better, the daycare lady had sewn a plain white doll diaper on it that peeked out from underneath the doll’s dress.  Now it really was her baby!

“Dang girl,” Rebecca guffawed.   “Is this what made you think you were one of the grown-ups? A doll?”

“A BABY DOLL”  Tara corrected her playpen pal.  “And I’m her Mommy.”

“When you play house, you play hardcore.”

Tara stopped and dangled the doll, the beautiful baby that made her feel so grown-up whenever she held it.  She lifted her legs and started pushing something warm and mushy into the back of her pants.  What it was she didn’t know and didn’t care.  One of the real grown-ups would take care of it eventually.  And Tara knew she could cry to speed up the process in case her bum got too itchy.  

For the time being, however, Tara had a new baby to take care of and an exasperated peer to ignore.  She really was a big girl; a woman grown; a new mother.  At least until she wanted to be something else….or decided to take a nap.

And so ends the tale of Tara Anderson.  A sleep deprived young mother whose reality got turned upside down?  Or a baby that got too wrapped up in her own intricate fantasies to notice the truth staring her right in the face?  She may never know, and neither will we.  

Such is what happens when you find yourself…

In the Dawn Domain.

(This was a patreon one-shot.)  To view more and other continuing stories, please subscribe.  patreon.com/personalias

[Personalias]

14 hours ago, Hopsalot said:

Ahh love the twilight zone vibes, I saw the intro and went to reading it in the narrators voice immediately 

Thanks.  I was going for that effect!