Portal

[MightyBirdy]

Hello! Long time lurker, first time poster! I've been a fan of the Diaper Dimension setting for a long while, but I can't say that some stories haven't stirred up a fair share of anger at the treatment the characters within the stories are often subjected to. This was a sort of passion project of mine to put those feelings to paper. I hope you guys like it!

 

 

 

Portal

 

Distant, quiet chirping from birds fluttering through the treetops outside pushed through the sparkling glass of the window far above my head. Thick, woolen curtains — not quite of blackout quality but extremely close to it — prevented my seeing them or, really, anything else beyond. In the mornings of yore, I would yawn and roll over, stretching my legs as I woke up. A morning staple. A repeat of a ritual I’d had since I was a kid. Even here, it was something I used to be able to take cold comfort in.

I could still roll over, but the stretching… wasn’t really possible anymore.

An underlying ripple echoed through my biceps and down my back while a yawn billowed through my nostrils and into my lungs. The blue blanket which was draped over my lower half the previous night at bedtime (read: sunset) remained. No sign of tossing or turning had disrupted its embrace beyond a few wrinkles at my waist. The little bees, each smiling and happy, looked up at me with encouraging faces. Almost as if to say ‘Welcome back to the waking world, Dioana!’

Fuckers.

As my eyes focused and adjusted to the dim light of the room, a few things came into focus. First were the white bars at the edges of my bed as well as the stuffed animals sat on either side of me. A pig, a dog, a ferret, and a raccoon sat to the periphery. Despite my repeated yeeting of the raccoon plush over the bed’s railing, it continuously — mysteriously — found its way back by my head when I woke each morning.

She knew I hated raccoons. Little fuckers with their demon thumbs and pitch-black eyes. That’d come up pretty quickly when I was dragged along to the zoo the first time.

Beyond the white bars was my “room”, a nursery designed for a child somewhere between one and three years old. A gigantic, hardwood rocking chair was nestled in the corner between two pink walls adorned with butterflies and fairies. There was, of course, a white changing table speckled with the same decor sat next to it. A toy box overflowing with stuffed animals and decorated with stickers spelling my “name” out on it was nearest to the crib.

Dee-Dee’s Toys.

To clarify for the unsuspecting reader, this isn’t the tale of an unexpectedly intelligent, cognizant toddler.

I’m twenty-six.

I used to be an adult — still am, though it’s harder and harder to claim as much these days. And I’m a prisoner. Trapped in an enlarged world designed to coddle me and care for all of my basic needs while fully equipped to destroy everything that made me, me.

My crime? Surely I must be atoning for something to bring about the wretched hell in which I’ve languished for so long. Well, that’s… depressingly simple. Clichéd, even.

 
Wrong place, wrong time.

You know, your average job interview where they seem all too eager to get you working as quickly as possible. Only instead of quickly finding yourself with responsibilities over your head, I found myself in a world where everything was over my head.

Literally. The micro-managing nature of both environments was peculiarly similar, though.

My name is — or was — Dioana Mathers. Friends called me Dio. Some still do, but only when we were sure we weren’t being listened in on. And I now live — if you can call this living — in a world populated by leviathans. Some of the other prisoners had appreciated that moniker. Apparently, Judaism didn’t exist wherever this was. Christianity might not, either; it was hard to tell since any discussion of a ‘Jesus Christ’ was viewed as “naughty language”.

When I’d been brought here, there had been frost all along the tips of the grass, crunching beneath the feet of the giants inhabiting this world. It had warmed, become cold again, and seemed to be warming back up once more like an old smith’s forge. The change of seasons had been thoroughly documented with each of the recent forays outside she’d forced upon me.

If logic tracked here as it had back home, it couldn’t be past seven in the morning judging by the reddish hue coating the rays of light. Time was important to keep an eye on. One of the few things that kept me aware and my mind sharp. But I couldn’t let her know I’d worked the irregular pacing of each day out. 

Benefits of having nothing but time, I’d been able to count seconds over the course of a month or two after they brought me here. I knew an hour had thirty-six hundred seconds to it and, by extension, a day should have eighty-six thousand, four hundred (Kudos to Mom for forcing me to enter that seventh-grade quiz bowl as a kid, by the way). But after piecing together the segments I’d counted during the very regular schedule we followed in those early days (not that now was much different), I kept coming up with well over a hundred thousand. Usually one-hundred fifteen thousand-ish.

For those not in the know, this fucking purgatory had thirty-two hour-long days. Or thereabouts, anyway. Once I’d begun getting carted off to the panopticonic daycare where she had enrolled me, I confirmed as much from some of the other prisoners. It wasn’t even particularly hard to notice. The transition from regularly pulling all-nighters to feeling dead-tired at sundown was, well, jarring, to say the least. Mid-day naps had suddenly become absolutely necessary to make it into the night. What was especially weird was that the giants of this world seemed completely unaffected by the additional eight hours.

So, rough estimate since there didn’t seem to be a damn calendar anywhere in this McMansion. It’d been around fourteen months since I came to this absolute fucking horror show of a world. 

Don’t act too impressed; I’m going off of my “birthday” celebration from a couple of months back. Only made sense whatever day she was celebrating was when I came here instead of my actual, you know, birthday. Despite my apparent gift for it, tracking time was unexpectedly difficult. I’m constantly losing hours during the day. Always after I... ugh.

Come on. Just say it. It’s always after I, well…

…

Fuck, I can’t. Pass. We’ll come back around to that one later.

But, yeah, back to the living hell. Each and every day seemed to consist of one humiliation after degradation after episode of abuse. The outfits I was involuntarily dressed in were certainly one of the worst parts. Yesterday, during a trip to the park, it’d been the shitty chromatic blue-pink unicorn bubble romper. The day previous at daycare, it’d been a dress with a white peter-pan collar, ribbons at the shoulders, and petticoats so stiff and high the snap-crotch romper clad over my groin offered only laughable concealment of what lay underneath.

You’d think the diapers were the worst part. And they used to be. They really, really fucking used to be. The damn little tabs stuck to the front of the toddler-approved animal designs were nigh-impossible to unstick, sealing me into the fluffed piss trap. It might’ve been possible with tools of some sort, but my hands were a bit undersized to utilize anything in the house.

By this point, much to the continued glee of my jailer, shitting my pants was just something that happened to me. Same with peeing. There was still some control, negligible as it was. But… there was this thing that you… drank… that pretty much numbed whatever inside machinery was responsible for “holding it”.

God. No. Still can’t. Need more time.

So, in summation, pissing and shitting myself happens and will continue to do without much input on my part beyond pleas to be changed after the fact. And that’s if I’ve noticed by the time she checks me. Let me be frank: there is nothing more humiliating than someone else being the first to notice that you “made a boom-boom” or a “present for mommy”.

Speaking of… yep. At least I noticed it first today.

The mobile was still spinning above; the stars, unicorns, and moons dancing in the same rhythmic movement they’d always engaged in. A whispered melody played too, though it was always the same nursery rhyme jingle. Never anything different, or unique.

Fucking Christ (see?), I missed real music. Something I could close my eyes and get lost in. A world built through sound. Jen, or “Jenny” as her jailer and the daycare workers called her, would often reminisce with me while the workers tended to the others. One day, we promised ourselves, we’d go to a concert again. An honest-to-goodness concert, not one of those bullshit sing-a-long park shows that our jailers had taken us to before. Advertised as a fun parent-child bonding experience, I was positive they were nothing more than a giant pedestal on which we could view our contemporaries, all dressed more or less of the same minuscule maturity level despite the age evident on our bodies and faces.

A faint rumble quaked beneath me, shaking softly through the crib’s mattress. She was up. That meant that I had — at most — about ten more seconds of privacy for the day, laughable as it was considering the baby monitor attached to the top left rail of the crib. I closed my eyes and tried to center myself. Another day of tortures would soon be over, and I could rest with the quiet chirp of the night.

The white door at the far side of the nursery opened and she entered, the giant stepping her slipper-clad foot onto the plush white carpeting of the room. My eyes remained closed for the most part, save for a tiny sliver of an opening to watch her approach. I didn’t want her to know that I’d begun waking up earlier than her. I wasn’t sure, but I had a hunch the dim light of the room and my angle cloaked my eyes from the baby monitor’s camera. Hopefully, it prevented too many details from being visible. If she knew I got up earlier than her, she might decide to fix that.

Her immensely curly, wavy black hair was at first visible, followed by her emerald green eyes and creamy ivory skin surrounding a superior, confident smirk. A single mole dotted the area just to the right of her top lip. Matilda was a woman who, had we met under different circumstances (and with similar heights), I might’ve made a pass at.
Correction. Would’ve made a pass at.

Her voice was as smooth as the slick side of velvet, and her body was clearly that of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. A sizable chest and hips with an ass that went on for absolute days. Hard to say how old she actually was, though. She left me feeling like a twig in comparison, even before everything that had transpired since she came into my life. Or, rather, since I came into hers.

It was really a shame that she was so fucking nuts.

“Dee-Dee…” Her voice was whispered and quiet as she slowly crossed the room to the crib. She reached in and took one of my pajama-covered feet between her giant fingers. “C’mon, sleepy-head, the sun is out to say hello!” Moving deftly, she wiggled said fingers gently beneath my ribs on either side and began to lift me up and out past the neck-high bars of the crib.

Finally, I opened my eyes with as little emotion I could manage, hiding the ever-present rage that flared at the sight of her.

“There she is! My widdle sweepy-head!” Matilda pulled me into a tight embrace, pushing me into her chest and nearly knocking the wind from my lungs as she continued to baby-talk at me. “Mommy’s happy to see you! Yes, she is!”

Thank god she didn’t refer to herself as “mami” or me as “mija”. Hopefully, that would keep my memories of home less tainted. I’d kept my multi-lingual talents a secret so far, deploying it only out of quiet frustration and whispered plotting with some of the others at daycare, and even then only when the workers weren’t paying attention. All of the giants were white, anyways. Doubtful any of them would think I’d said anything other than babble. For all her supposed superiority, Matilda was just as dumb as the rest of them and likely didn’t even know what Spanish was.

“Oh, Matilda. Aren’t monsters supposed to crawl out from under the bed?” was what I would’ve said in reply. Instead, because of the fucking pacifier I couldn’t pry loose from my lips, all that came out were extremely muffled grunts and groans.

You may be thinking ‘Dio, why don’t you just take it out? It’s only a pacifier.’ To that, I’d probably retort with some sort of clever, smarmy comeback — as long as my lips were free. The extreme oral fixation I’d developed, or as Matilda liked to call it: a case of “The Suckles”, was something that had been ingrained into me a few months into my stint in this world. It was hypnosis. And, unfortunately for me, not the fake stage bullshit you’d catch in Vegas. The people of this world had developed an honest-to-goodness method to hypnotize certain segments of their population, and the ones in charge weren’t afraid of using it. The oral fixation was probably obtained from one of the “special” cartoons she’d made such a big deal about renting for me after regular mouth soapings did nothing for the creative vulgarity I’d always had a knack for.

Damn bitch even tried the locking pacifiers for a while beforehand; the inflatable ones where the bulb filled up your whole damn mouth to painful effect. After I just started screaming through them, however, she must’ve changed strategies. Of course, I didn’t have much choice but to watch considering she’d left me in the playpen to stare at it for hours.

Now, humiliatingly, I was absolutely unable to spit out any pacifier placed in my mouth. Couldn’t pull them out, either. My body seemed content to just suck away on them instead. Even my thumb was finding its way between my lips more and more often. The worst part was that, on a subconscious level, having it in my mouth felt good. Relaxing. Like a drink after a long day.

So, yeah. I had the Suck— an extreme oral fixation. Not the fucking Suckles.

“Hi, cutie!” Matilda cooed. “I always miss you sooo much after bedtime. Maybe Mommy will move your crib into her room one of these nights. Just like a sleepover!” 
Doubtful. That crib was way too wide to fit whole into the hallway. She’d have to break it down and rebuild it just to get it into her room. No normal person would—

No. No, what was I thinking? Matilda wasn’t normal. She was fucking nuts, and that’s totally something she’d do! I sent few prayers to the gods and goddesses I’d taken up faith in lately. Anything that could help, right?

She set me down onto the pink-cushioned changing table and pulled a white strap across my upper torso. The leg straps — attached with a retractable cord on each for easy changing, lay abandoned and unused while she went to work at unbuttoning the legs of my sleeper. “Mommy and widdle Dee-Dee would get to sleep right next to each other! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely. Maybe I’d get to hear you let loose some of the noxious, rancid gas from your coal-burning heart, too.” The pacifier was still pressed tightly against my lips, reducing everything to nonsense and babble.

“So chatty today,” Matilda hummed as she tucked the legs of my sleeper underneath my back and so easily tore off the tabs of the diaper covering my lower half. Unfolding it, her smile grew wider as she bent down towards me. Her emerald eyes glistened as she spoke. “I’ll bet someone was excited to show Mommy the present in her diapee! Wasn’t she?”
See? What’d I tell you?

So, the absolute repetition of this exact moment was the second-place contender for the most hellish, most humiliating aspect of the purgatory in which I lived. This happened every. Single. Morning. Without fail. Even now crimson still found its way across my cheeks as my other set of cheeks was tended to with a startlingly cold wet wipe.
The worst part was that I was positive I only woke up like this because I—

Okay. Deep inhale.

It’s breastmilk. Her… breastmilk. It numbs everything down there. Everything. But, simultaneously, the taste of the stuff far outweighed anything I’d ever eaten back home. The most wonderful taste; like a vanilla shake made with only top-shelf ingredients. It was sweet, and creamy, and rich and warm, and… and… now I needed it. If I didn’t get it… well, I’d only ever smoked weed. Didn’t have much weed withdrawal after coming here. But I imagined this was what addiction must have felt like. And the milk withdrawal was brutal.

I haven’t been able to really tell when I was going to the bathroom for about the last year or so. Before that, my continence, or “potty-training” as Matilda referred to it, had been shaky but regulated. But these twice-a-day “feedings” apparently added up. As a result, instead of any sort of espresso, my mornings started with a fresh lump of shit in my pants. 
…I feel like I need to rewind a bit. This has all been sort of a lot to drop.

All of this started about fifteen months ago. Back when I was legally Dioana Mathers. Not Dee-Dee Trumlack. Fuck, even her last name sounded like medicine that made you gag.
Recently fired from my most recent job at a hardware store over, well, “creative differences” in the paint department, I’d been wandering around the city looking for “help wanted” signs and scanning the usual job sites for any local offerings. Most of the gigs were crap that wouldn’t pay half the rent my studio apartment demanded, but they were crap that accepted a general associate’s degree. Even still, I’d been determined to find something better. It couldn’t have been too much to ask to have enough in a months’ pay to cover rent, gas, and money for any sort of decent food.

Eventually, a posting showed up in my inbox one day — the mysterious, scam-like sort that I should’ve just trashed. Seriously, it was laughably bad. But... I didn’t. My mouse hovered over the delete button for minutes as I wrestled with myself. Bills were piling up, and I was getting desperate. The job, advertised as “Early-Childhood Development Assistant'' seems so ironic now that a fresh diaper was being taped around my hips by giant hands nearly three times the size of my own. But... listen. Until that point, I’d had no idea other dimensions even existed, let alone contained freak shows like this.

Worst come to worst, I figured, it’d be some sort of Persian prince scam. Not like I had much to lose, right?

The rest was a blur I still have trouble making sense of. Suffice to say, all pretenses surrounding the job fell away not long into that first day. After meeting my “boss”, a blond woman named Cheryl, I took an unexpected trip through some sort of rippling, blue air that populated the space between the frame of an odd, mechanical doorway. I vaguely remember a short hallway of sorts immediately thereafter, but that more or less clouded in an indistinct fog.  After a brief spell of vertigo, I glanced up from the ground to find myself surrounded by humans of absolutely enormous size. Cheryl had grown by a factor of two, and the other people with her towered similarly.

I’d stumbled head-first into the gaping maws of a “ReLocation Facility”, as Jen referred to it. Yeah, I also thought that L was a mistake. Here, people from other dimensions were processed. Tagged. Tested on.

Each and every one of the monsters running that hellhole would pay. If it took my dying breath, I would guarantee it. Every new method of subjugation and torture worse than the last, and not one iota of empathy or shame was visible on any of their faces. The only details I can remember of the giants muttering to each other between pain-filled sessions of torment were “Earth-94”, “stable doorway”, and “excellent candidate”.

Jen had been through something similar, she’d told me, when she was brought here a few months prior. Not from the same Earth, apparently. For one, she had no idea who Freddie Mercury was, nor Madonna. Screw the infantilization, that was the real tragedy.

Everything in this world was scaled up to an insane degree: houses and buildings, cars, and especially infant paraphernalia. The people themselves seemed to fall into three different height variants. Those I’d considered a normal height back home were “Littles” here, up to six-foot or so. Other people between six and nine feet were considered “in-betweeners”, or tweeners as far as slang went. A bit on the nose, but whatever. It fit. I had next to no concept of the history of this world, but I suspected tweeners might be a more recent byproduct of the other two groups having a severe bout of hate sex.

Finally, making up the top of the social hierarchy, were “Amazons”, humans who towered up to an unthinkable thirteen feet. The people who brought me here were exclusively in this category. Matilda was as well, and I had found that my eye level only leveled with the middle of her thigh.

In the early days, back before I’d been “introduced” to her, I’d rebelled. Fought back. Hell, I’d even done that after I met Scary-Mary. Told them where they could shove this perverted shit. That, unfortunately for my ass, was met with swift, stunning discipline. If they got you over their enormous laps — and they would — the game was up. You’d renounce whatever strategy you’d been operating by and announce, hysterically, that you’d play by their rules. That you’d be a “good girl” if only the rain of blows drawing inklings of blood across your ass would just stop for a moment. Or the forced feeding. Or leaving you to stew in your own filth.

I’m not proud to say that I’d found myself in that same situation many, many times early on. Not that I’m any less bitter now. I’m just better at hiding it.
“Okay, Dee-Dee,” Matilda said as she picked my otherwise naked body up from the surface of the changing table. “Let’s go get some num-nums in that tum-tums!”

I used to complain about the lack of clothing afforded to me when she fed me breakfast. I mean, you try sitting in the middle of a kitchen with your tits resting just beneath a giant bib and see if your appetite stays untouched. But that exact scenario wasn’t really a problem I had anymore. It’d been recently “fixed” for me.

Grudgingly, I grabbed a hold of her as she balanced me on her hip while we left the nursery. After a trip down the long, narrow hallway and through the humongous child-gate at the exit to the hall (one emblazoned with a “Little-proof” disclaimer on the side), she took a few steps down to the landing of the living room. The scattered toys in the gated playpen by the gigantic couch mocked me. All items of equally infantile amusement, each one belonged to and was played with by a singular person in the house. Alas, it wasn’t the one with thin, non-absorbent underwear.

The cushion strapped around my ass provided quiet comfort (besides the incessant crinkling) on the thin padding of the highchair seat. The vehicle for all home dining experiences I’d had since Matilda “adopted” me. Not the only one, mind. The occasional restaurant would provide a high chair with a view for me to drink breastmilk or a pureed version of Matilda’s meal from. Usually the former, though.

Clever word association for what was essentially legal human trafficking, by the way. Certainly explained why I hardly ever saw anyone my size not connected to a toddler leash or a baby carrier when we were out. It seemed that most Littles who’d been born here were already claimed property. The result of some sort of law or statute change, as far as an elderly Little at daycare could explain through her reduced faculties. Unfortunately for the Amazons still without a forever-child, babies didn’t exactly propagate.

But that was why I was here, wasn’t it? If this Earth was out of babies, why not look somewhere else?

Matilda began strapping me into the chair, the normal waist and cross straps you’d see on any sort of highchair going first. After finishing, her emerald eyes glanced across the other restraints. Wrist and bicep cuffs. Chest and neck-straps. All more than thick enough to hold me without issue.

She bent over at the waist and glared at me. “Does Mommy need to use these today, Birdy?” she asked, her tone low and indicative of the loaded nature of the question. I really hated that nickname.

Pacifier still in, I could do little more than shake my head. I wasn’t in the mood to fight. Tomorrow. I’d save that anger for tomorrow.

The dark nature of her demeanor faded once more into a slimy smile. Great! I’m so glad to see that you’re being a good girl today, Dee-Dee.” She tapped a finger along the ankle cuffs attached to the legs of the chair. “Not that we’d need those, huh?”

That was a dare, a call to action, and a threat all bundled in one. Like a cherry to a sundae, she pulled the accursed pacifier from my mouth and waited as her eyes bore into me. A predator anticipating their regularly scheduled meat. I hardly even noticed the spittle trailing from the bulb to my lips.

“No, Mommy,” I replied as calmly as my body would allow. This was the daily song and dance. She’d bait me, I’d gladly take it, and then not so gladly take whatever punishment would be doled out in reply. 

But not today. What little dignity I had left would need to take a few on the chin for a little bit. I’d fight back tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.

A newfound light sparked into Matilda’s eyes, and she looked as though I’d legitimately caught her off-guard. “Well, then I think someone is deserving of special breakfast, huh?” Her finger booped off the tip of my nose as she stood up. “What do you think, Birdy?”

Dammit. God fucking dammit. As manipulative and abusive as she was, Matilda was still an excellent cook — when she wanted to be. I didn’t want to eat mashed bananas, prunes, or oatmeal for breakfast again. It’d been four solid weeks of unsolid foods and liquids at every meal. You’ve no idea how much I needed something else to satisfy my stomach — how many inches remained between myself and insanity’s cliff. So I did exactly what she wanted me to do.

“Yes please, Mommy.” I cracked a weak smile across my face, hoping to sell the gratitude. I needed this.

Her hands fell to her hips. “Well, how can I say no to such perfect manners?” The breakfast she proceeded to cook up was nothing short of amazing. Homemade pancakes with blueberries and bananas in the batter, whipped cream on top. She even let me have a small bite of her breakfast sausage, something I hadn’t been given a chance to eat since before I’d arrived. Honest-to-goodness tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. I didn’t even care that she was spoon-feeding every bite into my mouth, complete with custom airplane sound effects. Almost half of the meal got onto the bib fastened over my recently-flattened chest, the text “Mommy’s little mess-maker” becoming covered with whipped cream and syrup as she purposefully missed every third or fourth spoon.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew she was conditioning me. Any non-regressed idiot would be able to parse that. And I was… letting it happen. Escape was all but impossible now. I blinked quietly as she rubbed at my face and hands with a wet wipe. Unlocking the tray to the highchair, she deposited the cartoon-adorned plate featuring Tillie and Pippie beneath syrup and berries still on it as well as the plastic tray next to the sink before unbuckling me. Said cartoon, Miss Teal’s Little Helpers, was a source of propaganda I was forced to watch far too often.

“Such good num-nums, huh Birdy?” She picked me up and nestled me in her arms as she grabbed the bottle of juice from breakfast and walked into the living room. “Mommy needs to do some cleaning up. Be good and play while I work, sweetie.”

She lowered me into the gated, carpeted expanse full to the brim with infantile toys, stuffed animals, and dolls. My feet dangled below as I made contact with the carpet. Maybe it was some stubborn part of my mind that refused to fold and concede, or maybe it was just a refusal to accept reality. Either way, instead of lowering onto my padded behind as usual, I tried to maintain my upright stance. Utilizing every muscle I could still feel, I desperately clung to the sense of verticality I’d once taken for granted. My legs wobbled dangerously, indicating such an action wasn’t sustainable.

Matilda took note of my minor act of defiance. “Oh! Dee-Dee is standing?” Her fingers slipped up beneath my armpits, dropping the bottle onto the tan carpet. “C’mon, take a few steps for Mommy!” she gleefully cheered. Though I was loathe to admit it, the stability she was providing was probably the only thing still keeping me upright. After a few humiliating steps accompanied by her cooed congratulations, she released me from her grip. Three wobbly, awkward footfalls were all I could maintain before my legs gave out, sending me collapsing onto the carpet.

“Aww.  Don’t worry, sweetie.” Matilda handed me the bottle of juice, the usual plapple, and rubbed at my back through my dangling raven tresses. “You’re not quite big enough for walkies, but you’ll be there soon! I’m sure of it!”

But I had been. Even after coming here, I used to be able to walk, even run. That was how I’d escaped before. Six months or so back. Made it out during the night. A fellow daycare Little had told me about a group in the city who helped adopted Littles, given they could get free on their own. I couldn’t remember the damn name of the group, and nobody would repeat it to me after the incident, but I know the Little passing the information along seemed to believe in it. There was a gas station, we’d determined, one a little over a mile away from my house where one of their elk worked a night shift. If I could get there, I had a shot. Of what, I wasn’t sure. Probably not returning home, I’d been disappointed to learn. But something different than this purgatory.

A well-placed stuffed animal on the other side of the crib bars softened my fall that night, and a few stacked ones had allowed me to reach the nursery door handle. The house was enormous during the day, but in the black of night, it was like a cavernous void waiting to swallow me whole. There hadn’t been a Little gate then, so traversal was easy enough as long as I was careful of the squeaky landing steps. The shoe bench by the front door gave me enough purchase to unlock the deadbolt and turn the knob. There’d been an audible creak when the door opened, though I prayed it went unheard as I dashed outside. Didn’t really have any other choice.

Clad in a footed sleeper and diaper sizable enough to cause an unavoidable waddle, I hurried down the dimly lit sidewalk that was about as wide as I was tall before splitting off into a wooded embankment at the first sight of a car. It must’ve taken hours waddling as I was, and by the time I reached said gas station the sleeper was covered in muck, wet to the touch, and torn from a few of the bramble bushes I’d stumbled into. I was freezing, my shaking nearly violent and uncontrollable.

But I was there. I didn’t know how they’d help me, but anything was better than life as a baby doll. Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I took my first step towards freedom.
Thing is, it didn’t matter how late in the night it was. Gas stations are the nexus of night travelers, and I didn’t make it five steps into the parking lot before the headlights of a car turned on me. A “concerned bystander” quickly took me into their arms before I could flee, the police were called, and I was very suddenly in the custody of people working for something called the LPA, or Little Protection Agency. The badges of their agents had initially filled me with hope before they mentioned returning me to my “caretakers”. Apparently, I had a handy chip in my ass they’d inserted when I came over. All it took was a simple scan from some sort of device on their part, and Matilda’s name came up.

Earlier, when I spoke of the technological prowess these people had, I didn’t just mean their damn doorways into other worlds. Bio-capable nanotech was also well within their reach. I’d seen its effects on other Littles in the daycare. People who lost height, mass, teeth, bone density, even motor functions overnight. And after having waited for a very, very long time in that white, sterile room inside a stupid crib clad in nothing but a pink hospital gown and diaper as the lights were dimmed and they played lullabies overhead, a man in a long, white coat entered.

He seemed so nice. He was talking to me like I was a person, not an infant. For a brief, shining moment, I honestly thought he was about to realize how fucked up this entire dimension was.

But then he injected something just above the base of my spine.

That something resulted in the muscles in my legs rapidly turning to numb, jelly-filled sacks which I could do little more than momentarily stand on before tumbling onto the plastic-covered examination table. Despite a mostly normal appearance barring some additional chubbiness that accumulated around my knees and calves, my legs were almost completely useless. Precautionary, the doctor had said. What a funny lack of an explanation. If someone tries to escape jail in a normal world, you don’t cut their fucking legs off. 

I’d have been curled up in the fetal position if I could’ve managed to maneuver my legs correctly by the time Matilda arrived. Whatever they did to my calves had an odd numbing effect on my knees, too. When she saw me, there was something curious about her expression. It wasn’t joyous at having found me, her “baby” safe and sound. It wasn’t remorse at having let me endanger myself. Nor a fit of loud anger at my having escaped. Honestly, none of the expected parental reactions.

Instead, the emotion she wore was that of quiet contentment. Picking my tired, crying form up, she toyed with my near-useless foot and smiled. Fucking smiled.
Her raven black hair fell right across my vision as she dressed me in the outfit from her… from my diaper bag. After being forced to bid the agents who’d mutilated me farewell with an infuriating “bye, bye”, we left the hybrid LSA office-chop doc clinic. She’d later claimed they did the whole thing by the books, and that those sorts of treatments were instituted by protocol, not request.

Protocol. Hah. What a fucking load of bullshit.

Protocol didn’t explain the visit to the doctor’s office a week later. There, I was given a similar shot which this time resulted in MY TITS melting away, the fat transferring elsewhere in my body and lending me more of a “baby fat” ridden appearance. Protocol didn’t explain my previously brunette hair being dyed to a dark raven black after an appointment at Little’s salon, Lil’ Munchkin’s.

“At least they didn’t change your skin, sweetie,” Matilda had said as I was placed into my usual car seat in the back of her SUV after the doctor’s appointment. I glanced between her ivory-colored skin and my own tawny complexion. “Mommy made sure they only fixed what needed to be fixed.”

Protocol. Right. That pretend-woke fake-ass bitch. It almost would’ve been better if she was racist, too.

A few hours passed as I milled about the playpen. Well, crawled. It was an effort, but the muscles in my thighs were still strong enough to keep me upright for a while, perhaps stronger than they’d ever been, honestly. I’d downed the juice early on; Matilda was very keen I not get dehydrated. Again, picking battles. I passed the time by playing out some of my deepest fantasies with the available toys. Strangely, all of them did seem to feature my having murdered Matilda in some way. Funny how that worked out. 

Hey, it’s not like I’m a total psycho. Some of them just prominently featured her with my fist repeatedly ramming into her face. Hardly anything “dark” or “disturbing” there.

Pretend was hard at first, but given enough time and… “encouragement”, even the most stoic marine could get in touch with their imagination. Before I knew it, Matilda was back at the playpen gate dressed for the day and with shoes on. Her hair was gathered into a messy bun at the top of her head save a few dangling strands. Otherwise dressed in sensible, outside mom-wear, my stomach dropped at the thought of what it might portend.

“Okay, Birdy, let’s get you all dressed.” She leaned down to scoop me up from the pen and carried me back towards the nursery.
“Where are we going?” I asked, deciding that I’d earned enough goodwill to prod a bit.

“A special place!” she responded, refusing me any real information. I was summarily dressed in a yellow sundress featuring an applique on the front of a bear with a purple bow beneath its ear. The prerequisite diapers were, of course, below that. Matilda took care in pulling white tights up my legs after checking the state of my diaper and proclaiming that I “wasn’t that wet”, her fingers teasing along my calves as she did. Finally, black mary-jane shoes were buckled around my feet (not that they’d be used) and my hair was done up into two braided pigtails.

After packing the purple diaper bag full of extra supplies, she popped a pacifier into my mouth and exited the house with me safely cradled against her hip.
“Say bye-bye, house,” she requested as we approached the car.

“Sure would be a shame if you left the stove on,” I replied into the pacifier.

Matilda giggled and bounced me up and down. “We’ll see it again in just a few hours, Birdy. My cute widdle suckler.”

Strapped into my comfortable-yet-restrictive purple and pink car seat, Matilda pulled out onto the road in her red SUV and began towards an unknown destination. I tugged uncomfortably at the straps but didn’t struggle any further. It’d stood up to everything I’d thrown at it thus far. Nothing I could do to the damn buckle would free me. Instead, my eyes drifted towards the bottle of white, milky liquid Matilda had placed beside me in the attached cup holder. How nice of her to take my pacifier out for me.

“Make sure to drink up, sweetie!” Matilda called to me, her eyes boring into mine through the rear-view mirror. “Mommy just pumped this morning.”

I should be fighting. I didn’t want this. I wanted to be free, to be Dioana Mathers again. 

But the rage that had been present all morning began to fade from my heart somewhat as reality reasserted itself atop the vivid fantasies I chased with my toys.

I’d never be her again.

If not Matilda, then the other inhabitants of this world would help ensure it.

I gingerly took the bottle from the holder and began to slowly nurse from the nipple on top. Another day. I’d fight another day.

 

 *    *    *

 

I awoke to a groggy, blurry scene sometime later. Laying flat on my back in the trunk of the super-sized SUV, the unsurprising realization that I was in the middle of yet another diaper change dawned on me. The infantile dress was hiked up to my chest and leggings down to my ankles as Matilda stood overhead, her hands working like a seasoned pro’s as she laid a fresh diaper beneath me and rolled up the discolored, used one to my right. Behind her, I could vaguely make out the blurry shape of cars, trucks, and other vehicles. People-shapes moving to the right. Towards something. Seemed like we’d reached whatever destination she had in mind.

So, another side effect of Amazon breast milk besides the immediate ejection of your bodily waste into your pants. Like chugging a pint of nyquil, the concoction conked you out almost immediately after finishing the bottle, breast, or whatever container it was in. Tracking the average amount of time I was out for was a doomed effort. Sometimes it would only be for an hour or two, sometimes six to eight. The only theory I could work out was the involvement of other variables determining the length of sleep.

Matilda noticed my fluttering eyes and smiled down at me. “Birdy~! Look who’s back from from the Land of Nod. You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake you up for changies.”
“W-where…?” I asked. My pacifier wasn’t obscuring my speech, so it was lucky I didn’t great her with the usual epithets. She finished with my change and deposited my soiled diaper into a little baggie before sliding it into a larger plastic bag attached to a holder in the back. Sort of a pseudo-diaper-genie. Across the row of parking I saw another Little in the same situation as I, though he looked to be putting up more of a fight. Screaming, hollering, the whole nine yards as a larger woman in a blue and white striped dress toiled away attempting to change him. 

“Not here! Not in front of these people!” his cries carried over the bright, shiny asphalt well.

Judging by the infantile way he was dressed, he clearly wasn’t abducted here. Chances are his fate was already sealed, same as my own. And yet, as I watched his jailer pull the smaller man onto her lap in the way that telegraphed an imminent punishment, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

Fucking amateurs. It wasn’t worth giving a shit about having your pants down in public. The Amazons expected it, and everyone else — including the tweeners — wouldn’t dare stick around to mock you less they be roped into the same situation themselves. There were more pressing things to worry about than whether people saw what was expected from us in the first place.

Matilda gave the other ‘family’ only a passing glance as she finished up. “As I said earlier, we’re at a super special place!” She pulled my dress back down and placed me onto her hip while shouldering the diaper bag on her other arm. A pacifier stopped any further conversation on my part as we started making our way across a parking lot towards some large building in the distance, something that appeared squat at first glance. It was only two stories high by the standards of this world, something that struck me as odd. If everyone we were walking with were Littles, we’d all fit into the building without issue. But the only Littles I could see were being carried by hip, toddler leash, or infant carrier into the building. The vast majority of the people we were walking past were other Amazons.

Curiously, a few of them had the usual Little restraining gear but no Little in sight. My head was on a swivel as I tried to discern what exactly was happening.

“Someone sure is a curious lookie-Lou,” an older Amazon woman with blond hair commented as we passed her and a Little girl with similarly blond hair (dyed, you could see graying roots if you looked closely enough) in pigtails who was strapped into one of those blue baby vests that seemed to be in style lately. Her arms were contained inside of the shiny material, but her legs dangled out of the bottom openings where they bounced fruitlessly against the woman’s belt.

“That she is,” Matilda’s voice crowed overhead. The Little attached to the Amazon just stared at me, her expression as blank as her eyes. Finally, after a moment shared in silence, she wiggled an arm up and out of the opening where her head was and began to wave frantically. Not for help or alarm, though.

“Hi!” the Little woman shrieked at me. “My nameth Amy!” As she spoke, her lips left her teeth exposed, or lack thereof.  The top front two were missing, leaving a gap in her smile that she couldn’t help but lisp through, reducing her S’s to a permanent “th”. “Whath yourth?”

“D-d…” I couldn’t complete any sort of response, my brain steadfastly refusing to form any sort of answer. It’d been a while since I’d interacted with someone like her.

“Dee-dee,” Matilda answered for me. “She’s got a bad case of the Suckles today, so she probably isn’t going to be much of a talker, sweetie.”

“Dath okay!” the small woman giggled. If the way she bounced up and down in her carrier and smiled up at the larger woman with abject adoration clear as day in her eyes didn’t seal the deal, her thumb becoming firmly lodged between her lips certainly did.

She’d gone feral. 

Hypnosis could bring a little to this point, the state where a Little acts and views themselves as nothing but the infant to toddler they’re forced to behave as. But hypnosis and being feral were mutually exclusive. Hypnosis of that degree was more like a lobotomy than anything. A good tell was the lack of a spark in the eyes. Right in the pupil, at the edge where the iris would normally enlarge and contract. Someone lost to the throes of deep hypnosis would always have slightly enlarged pupils that wouldn’t quite contract. Not normally, anyway.
If you’d spent fourteen months in an adult daycare, you’d become pretty good at identifying it. Almost always in the people you once called your friends who now couldn’t even acknowledge your presence.

Feral, on the other hand, was when the Little had long since given up the fight themselves. They’d willingly accepted the loss of their identity as they once knew, and had leaned into the new role full tilt. Often, it happened with no advance notice. Sometimes, a particularly close friend would tell you. There was never really any attempt at convincing those individuals otherwise. We all knew sooner or later what was coming.

That eventuality was staring me in the face as she drooled all over her hand and chin.

Matilda pulled me closer as she and the older Amazon chatted away while we entered a line outside of the building. Getting a better look at the front of the line was difficult with the blabbermouth on my right.

“Whath your favorite color? Mineth yellow. Like da thun! And thunflowerth. Mommy thayth I’m her little thunflower a lot. I have a bunch of dretheth with thunflowerth on ‘em. Even a nice big hat Mommy puts on me when ith thunny out.” The longer the woman talked to me, the fiercer a teeny, tiny itch became in the back of my brain. Couldn’t for the life of me have identified it, but there was certainly a haze of static growing with each topic shift.

After what felt like an eternity, we approached the front of the line. Ticket booths were set up on either side of the entrance, and the line split in two once we got close enough. Amy and her warden split from us, thankfully, as they began to talk to a person sitting in an office chair behind a thick layer of glass with a few openings at face and hand level. Amy waved back at me, a goodbye I didn’t reciprocate, instead too distracted by the cold sweat seeping into my dress and the back of my diaper while anxiety began to needle away from the tip to the base of my spine.

“Hello there!” A young man sat in the chair of our booth wearing a blue polo shirt with a blue and black baseball cap on. Judging by the proportion of his head and hands, I had a feeling he was a Tweener. Identification?”

“Right here,” Matilda replied. She fished her phone out of a pocket in the diaper bag and faced it towards him. I caught a glimpse at it before she turned it to face his scanner and saw what looked to be a sphere of dots moving independently of each other, mostly in a cluster but with a few dozen scattered out above the surface of the pack. The man scanned her phone with some sort of hand-held device that beeped. He looked at his screen and nodded with approval.

“Alright, have fun! Make sure to keep your ticket on hand, there’ll be a giveaway for a few ticket holders at the end of the game.”

“Oh, won’t that be exciting, Birdy?” Matilda carried me away from the booth and passed through what appeared to be some sort of security checkpoint. A man and woman, both Amazons, were dressed in security guard garb and were on either side of an object shaped like a beige U. Matilda handed the diaper bag over to the man as the woman kept her eyes on a screen to the left of the object. At their direction, we passed through. A curt ding populated the air as the woman nodded, allowing us to step over to the end of the table where the diaper bag was being repacked. The man handed it back to Matilda with a smile.

“Beegeez! I’ve got the same brand at home for my Little boy,” he said. “They’re the best at stopping leaks, I’ve found.” Typical. Always count on “parents” to offer unsolicited feedback on their “child’s” undergarments.

“Right?” Matilda replied with a knowing inflection. “I can finally stop packing more than one spare outfit for my little leaky faucet.”

“Here’s hoping!” The woman chimed in. “Have a nice day, ma’am. Hopefully the little one stays this behaved the whole game.”

Matilda bounced me up her hip, raising my dress and flashing my diaper as she shouldered the diaper bag. All eyes were on me as she giggled. “Oh, she will be. She’s my little princess, after all.”

Even after fifteen months of this, the rush of blood to my cheeks as embarrassment seeped in was still an incredibly potent toxin to my confidence. I shifted my head into Matilda’s shoulder, the only respite from their prying eyes. All three of the Amazons shared a sort of “knowing” laugh, and the two guards ushered us through. 

We moved in a similar direction as a large grouping of people, most with other Littles either in strollers, on their hip as Matilda had, or restrained in some other fashion. One stroller in particular had an occupant looking around with big, wide eyes as he talked to his warden, a woman with her brown hair pulled up into a bun, not unlike Matilda’s. She simply smiled, tapped at her ear, and probably deflected whatever he was so insistent about.  Every now and then a cry from a Little around the room would echo out before they were silenced with a pacifier or codeword or even an old-fashioned slap on the thighs. Further back, I watched as some of the Amazons with Little-restraining gear and equipment but sans an actual Little filed into a hallway split off from this one. They disappeared behind a turn, blocking them from further sight.

Weird.

And really, what was this place? Surely my change in demeanor and response to Matilda’s infantilization wasn’t going to bring about any earth-shattering status quo shifts, right? At least not so quickly. And any sort of reward she knew I’d prefer wouldn’t have so many other babied Littles also in attendance. But at the same time, we’d never been anywhere like this. The zoo a dozen or so times, sure. Hell, even an “amusement” park — though none of those venues had quite the sense of decor as this one.

The building itself was immaculate and grand; the walls sporting a grandiose station-like design with tiles that reflected the warm, yellow light of several hanging chandeliers overhead. Red carpet was underfoot, giving the impression that we were in a theater of some sort. There was a short walk to another few sets of double doors, themselves nestled on the other side of a long, circular hallway that intersected with the entrance to the building. As we passed through the doorway into a huge, open auditorium, I realized that the circular hallway must have contained at least four or five other entrances similar to this one. All of them led into a space that evoked the memory of a basketball court, though styled in the shape of an ice hockey rink. 

An arena, basically.

And it was absolutely packed. Nearly every seat in sight was filled with an Amazon or Mid. Any Littles were either out of sight or sitting on someone’s lap. The overall capacity must’ve been at least three or four thousand people. And I felt like a mouse in a mansion.

Matilda walked down a set of stairs built into the ground beside row after row of red plastic seats, each containing at least one Amazon and, about a quarter of the time, a Little sporting a particularly distressed expression. Some of the people around were wearing large foam fingers, sipping from plastic cups (not the sippy kind), and one person even held a pair of pom-poms in the hands of their Little who wore a tiny cheerleading uniform. Overhead, above the court, was a scoreboard and gigantic light fixtures illuminating the humorous room. The scoreboard was playing advertisements at the moment, but the wording beneath the screen was immediately horrifying.

Adoptees Remaining.

My perception of reality shuddered like the snapback of a rubber band as those two words digested across my psyche. We couldn’t be. This couldn’t… and oh, so suddenly; I understood the distress of the others. We’d entered a live shooting range.

Matilda looked at her phone and made a contented sound.

“26A. That’s us!” She scooted past several other Amazons in the midst of conversation and lowered into one of the plastic seats. She slid the diaper bag beneath her seat while I was settled onto her lap.  Her large hands nestled between my armpits and over my stomach, crinkling the waistband of my diaper. Beside myself with a flurry of nausea and anguish, I tried to wriggle free from her grasp as the projected lights overhead began to swirl in thematic, circular motions.

“Dee-dee…” Matilda warned, her voice dropping into threatening waters. The grip her fingers had maintained on my stomach tightened. “Be a good girl for Mommy.”

My head was on a swivel as I wide-eyed her and the arena. The floor was wooden planked from end to end in a giant ovular shape. On one end was a concrete entrance that emerged out from beneath a section of seats, a sight familiar to basketball fans. Inside, I could just make out some shadowed silhouettes moving about. There was not a similar entrance on the other side of the court. Instead, there were five glossy metal rectangles embedded into the wooden floor. A guardrail, placed just a row ahead of us, was all that separated us from the court. It stood about three or four feet tall on our side, though from the lowered perspective of the court it would have been about seven or eight feet tall. Clearly, the intent wasn’t to prevent spectators from getting in.

The sinking feeling in my stomach only worsened.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!” A disembodied man’s voice called out to the auditorium through the overhead speaker system. “Welcome to Stanhatton’s beautiful Curlee Stadium!” The lights oscillated over towards an announcer’s table on the opposite side of the arena. A man was standing there in a metallic navy suit and black hair perfectly manicured to spike out at the front. He stepped out from behind the table and gestured widely out towards the audience.

Sebastion Mawnee. The moment I saw him, the instant his whiny, pleading little voice thumped against my ears, any pretense of this being something other than what it so clearly was died on the spot.

“It has been such a long winter, hasn’t it? I must admit, I’ve quite missed the familiarity of this wonderful arena and being in the presence of so many fellow fans!” The microphone was acting almost as a secondary prop to his own schmooze. “As you all know by now, I’m Sebastian Mawnee, your lovely announcer and master of ceremonies for today’s event.”
Fuck. FUCK! I needed to get out of here, I needed—

Matilda gripped me tighter. “Dee-dee. I won’t warn you again.”

Sebastian’s voice cut through hers.

“And I’m pleased as a peach to welcome you to the 37th annual opening Adoptathon match of the season!”

Adoptathon. A uniquely Amazonian approach to gamified human trafficking. Matilda had watched some highlights on TV at home, and I’d spoken with some of my friends at the daycare about it. The concept of the “game” was that a group of Amazons would enter the arena from one end and would attempt to “adopt” a limited number of Littles from other worlds, hence the “adoptees remaining” counter. Any who did would have the adoption fees waived, and would receive some sort of prize after the fact. Said Amazons were stepping out onto the court as Sebastian called for the would-be parents to wave hello to the fans. Only portal Littles participated in this game as, insanely, the Amazons had deemed the Littles of this world to possess at least some semblance of basic human dignity. Denizens of other worlds, however, had nothing of the sort to cling to.

Sebastian brought the microphone back to his lips as the courtside Amazons all readied themselves, each with their equipment readied to soon possess a Little they currently lacked.
“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce our participants for today’s match!”

Participants. Not even contestants. There was nothing they could reasonably do to win. I turned around, trying to bury my face into Matilda. I couldn’t watch this. Why had she brought me here? I could hear machinery whirring behind my head as Matilda lifted my chin to face her.

“Good little girls watch, Dio. You are good, aren’t you?”

I was speechless as she physically turned me around, the material of my very likely wet diaper scrapping against her lap. Five metal devices were rising from where the rectangles were previously, each shaped like a doorway. And with a loud CRACK, as each one lit up either blue, or green, or even purple; a simple truth became apparent to even the most ignorant Little.

We were about to watch a lot of people go through a lot of anguish.

Sebastian took his time laying the next part of his spiel out. “We’ve got a special surprise for you folks, today. To mark the start of our thirty-seventh season, a new locale has been added to the roster amongst a few of our returning hosts. For the first time, in addition to today’s lineup of hosts consisting of Earth-72, Earth-33, Earth-19, and, of course, Earth-6; Earth-94 is joining the lineup and is OPEN for adoptions. Will you be one of the first to adopt a Little from Earth-94?”

Ninety-Four? My… my world?

Any liquid that hadn’t already done so thoroughly froze stiff within my veins. My world. They were taking people from my world. I… I hadn’t even considered others since I’d been taken. At least, not anyone outside of my family. Was this really the first time my world was being opened up to these fucking monsters?

Matilda let out a quiet, knowing chuckle and bounced me against her lap. “Hardly.”

Sebastian continued. “As a reminder for both our contestants and viewing audience, our on-hand staff, including several of our trusty Notary Publics, will provide each new parent with all the necessary paperwork once they’ve procured their precious little bundles of joy AND a thousand-dollar gift-card to purchase supplies with, courtesy of Hewland’s Widdle Hearts — the destination for all things cute and cuddly.”

Colored air swirled between the metal archways lined up asymmetrically on the floor, each sized for an Amazon. Escape — real escape, had never been so close. I wasn’t sure which was my doorway, but I had about a twenty percent chance of guessing correctly, and a one-hundred percent chance of finally escaping this hell hole. But as I was dragged back against Matilda’s stomach and felt the press of her obnoxiously large breasts against the back of my head, I recognized that fantasy for what it was. Even if I could get free and somehow survive the drop onto the court without fucking up one of my useless legs or worse, my arms; I’d never be able to get to the portals in time. They were obviously controlled remotely, and they’d see me long before I could get close.

The sound of a basketball buzzer rang out overhead as yellow LED-like lights lit up the scoreboard overhead. Flashes of white light began to occupy the interior of the portals as figures emerged from them. The first was a girl, somewhere in between her late teens and twenties, walking through with a purple backpack and her hair cascading loosely over the shoulders of her black denim jacket covering a sundress. Poor girl would probably come to despise purple in a few weeks. There was a piece of paper attached to her jacket, but I couldn’t make out what it was from this vantage point. As other figures began to emerge through the flashes, the girl looked at her surroundings with mounting confusion. More and more of the people entered from the portals, eventually culminating in a large grouping of relatively not-large people.

The number on the scoreboard crept higher and higher as more and more people emerged from the other dimensions. All of them were similarly dressed. Not in the way of a single uniform, but that all of them were sporting loose-fitting clothing and vacation wear. Flowing dresses. Loose shorts and button-up shirts. Tiny shorts that could be removed with ease. Was that how they were able to get these people here? The promise of some kind of tropical vacation acting as both a lubricant for eager applicants as well as a guarantee that all “participants” would be wearing easily removable clothing?

Two birds, one stone.

As if it were any surprise to me, it still burned in my chest to no end how viciously clever these nigh-demigods could be. Curiously, no small children were visible. Apparently Matilda’s fucked-up sense of a moral code was more common than I thought. Once the counter reached fifty, the portals all shut off, but the supporting archways remained standing. Everyone gathered on the court stared at the opposing party. One with utter confusion, the other with unsatisfied hunger.

Just before the formerly yellow LEDs turned green, a small, shrill voice pierced the air from some unseen spectator.

“RUN!” The more audible sound of a slap, harsh skin-on-skin contact, followed.

Another horn sounded, and the Amazons stormed across the court towards their not-so-unsuspecting prey. That was when the screams started. Single people. Couples. Whole families; each with backpacks and a summery choice in clothing. A few had turned to run, but with the portals off, it was too late. The first Amazons to grab at the newly-minted portal Littles nearly tackled them, each hoisting their prize high into their air and protecting them from other grabby Amazons. Exclamations followed, of course. Things like “I got one!” or “Yay! I’m a Mommy/Daddy!” or even “Aww, twins!” as one particular Amazon held what I could only surmise to be a boyfriend and girlfriend separated by their new “parent’s” chest. They ended up having to fight to keep both of the Littles in their arms and away from other Amazons without a Little to claim.

“Wow!” Sebastian’s voice called out over the speakers as he pointed at the woman. “Now there’s two little cuties. Congratulations, ma’am! You’ll make an excellent mommy!”
The remaining people were crying out in utter horror and terror as the giants descended, each claim which exited the court driving the number further and further down. There were a few instances where the larger littles tried to fight back, but that only invited the sort of punishment a Little could always expect.  Their smaller forms were yanked over the knee of a kneeling Amazon, their shorts or dresses pulled out of the way, and their behinds hammered with dozens of painful slaps that nearly instantly reduced the adults to tears. Families tried rushing to them to help, but they were only picked over further by other opportunistic Amazons.

A guy with a ginger goatee had run in our direction, only to be plucked from the ground just as he reached the barrier. The Amazon, a larger man, held the smaller man close and looked at the paper attached to his clothing.

“Thomas?” the Amazon said, reading aloud. He let the paper drop as the man fruitlessly kicked against the Amazon’s chest and stomach. 

The Little wasted no time in trying to shout the Amazon down. “Let go of me, you fuckin’ giant! I’ll be no part of this perverted game!”

The new parent only laughed in reply. “Yeah, you look like a Tommy to me. Let’s go get everything squared away, then you can go meet your other daddy!” The ginger man was smushed against the Amazon’s chest with little indication of feasible resistance as they moved towards the other side of the court. They’d only just returned to the same entrance the Amazons had used to enter the court with when a thunderous BOOM echoed across the metal beams holding the ceiling aloft. 

Bright yellow and orange light reflected off of the dimly lit rafters and flooring, drawing the eyes of all spectators, participants, and even cameras. A leftover puff of smoke was left drifting down towards the court. Debris fell from the ceiling onto the court below in a loud clatter of sound. Before any of us could fully comprehend what we’d just witnessed, another burst of light lit up the arena from the opposite angle, bringing another BOOM and then, even quicker than the last, another explosion from somewhere above us. The main floodlights kicked back on, as did the portals themselves. Amazon, Tweener, and Little alike (well, maybe just the first two) were already up and rushing out of our seats as a mutual understanding was reached. What few littles remained on the court didn’t need an overabundance of guile to seize the chance presented to them. Five or six bolted back towards the gates, each one successfully making it through and, more than they may ever appreciate, back to their lives.

The screams which had only moments earlier come solely from the smaller of the two groups was now spread equally among people of all sizes as everyone rushed for the exits. Matilda jerked me up and against her body as she scrambled to grab at the diaper bag. Though the straps pulled taut with each yank, it remained firmly lodged beneath the seat and was unwilling to move.

“C’mon, dammit!” Matilda shouted as another explosion ripped through the air overhead. White banners were dropping from the ceiling, each emblazoned simply with The Voiceless in bold, black text. Like a light switch, a long-lost name shot back to the surface of my memory. The gas station group. It was them!

Sebastian was pushing people out of his way as he hurried up the stone steps on the other end of the arena. Men, women, even children (actual children) were roughly shoved to the side as he fled for his life.

Coward. Anybody that trafficked human lives always was.

Finally, Matilda was able to pull the bag loose and gripped it over her shoulder as we hurried up the now empty stairs towards the exit. A horrid metal creak groaned overhead. Both Matilda and I looked up to find one of the gigantic light fixtures swaying dangerously as sparks jettisoned out from its wiring near the ceiling. We might as well have been deer in the headlights as a loud SNAP filled our ears. The fixture rocketed towards us with such speed that I’d only just realized it was falling a moment before it slammed against the seats to our right. The plastic chairs folded like paper beneath the weight of the metallic light fixture. Concrete cracked and splattered out from under it, propelled towards us by the force of the impact they may as well have been little pieces of shrapnel. Sharp, stabbing pain pelted me across my chest and shoulder. Matilda’s grasp on my body loosened and released as the force of the impact sent us both flying. Whole seconds were spent in the air as my body rotated first once, then twice, until a final total of three times was reached before I collided against something hard like a partially deflated basketball.

A cone of darkness sprang to life at the edge of my vision, and it was less than a second before it swallowed all that was in sight whole.

 

*    *    *

 

It could’ve only been a moment or two before consciousness wheezed back into my brain like a big dog after a long summer walk. Smoke was everywhere. Rocky debris was scattered across the floor. Everything hurt. A hazy, cursory glance at my arms revealed neither to be obviously broken or crooked. But each breath was hot. Searing. It hurt to merely exist.

“Fuck…” I was slow to notice the lack of obstruction between my lips. The pacifier was gone. Running my fingers along my mouth provided absolute verification of that fact. The impact must have knocked it out of my mouth — likely along with the air from my lungs. It looked like I had landed on the court somewhere near the portals if the colored light behind the smoke was anything to go by. What I couldn’t tell was how far they were, or if I would even be able to move an inch.

But as I looked to my left and right and found nobody to be running for me at that exact moment, Amy’s face resurfaced in my mind. Feral. If I didn’t at least try, how long did I have?

Years?

Months?

…Weeks?

A bruised, sore hand slapped against the wooden floor ahead of me. I pulled myself towards it, dragging myself across the ground. Then another hand, this one covered in red, did the same. And I did the same again. Over and over, through the agony and pain, I pulled myself closer and closer to those lights.

This was my only chance. I had to try. I had to make it count.

Another handhold to pull myself with. My shoulders were beginning to protest and groan, nearing the point of refusal of my commands. But I kept on. Something wet was registering against my abdomen, and I wasn’t sure if it was piss or the blood covering my left hand. There were distinctly person-shaped things at the periphery of my vision, each laying on the ground and none moving. I kept my eyes forward, refusing to be distracted.

I couldn’t afford it. Maybe if I had working feet.

I was able to break free of the smoke cloud, slowly at first, but with a few more handholds I was able to get a better view of the situation. Three of the portals were no longer emitting the colored light from before, two of which were in flames and the cause of the smoke. Circuitry hung from the arches, each sending out cascading showers of sparks onto the wood and metal below them. I was only a couple dozen feet from the green and blue doorway, both of which were situated only eight or so feet apart.

Vigor and frenzy flooded from my brain into my nervous system as I picked up my pace. I was so close. Almost there. Almost home! I made it another dozen feet dragging myself along when—

CRACKOOOOOM!

Another explosion sounded overhead, this time different from the others in sound as well as color. A blue burst of electricity roared from the smoke cloud in large arcs of electricity that fell and faded into the air. The green portal’s colored air halted and pulled inward for an instant before bursting out towards me, coating my body with extremely hot air. My eyes immediately started to water, and the knuckles of my left hand, the one closest to the doorway, sizzled with pain. Flames licked at the sides of my body, eating away at the dress Matilda had so carefully picked out. In a moment of reprieve, I looked up. Sparks hopped along the surface of the formerly-working archway, taunting me.

That left blue.

The hand closest to the green portal screamed with pain on each heave I exerted towards it, up to the point that I could no longer use it to hold my weight. Reduced to only my right hand, I continued at half speed towards the blue doorway.

It was my last hope. The only chance I’d ever get for the rest of my life.

Blue illumination coated the floor as I approached, and there was a similar warmth in the air as I neared it. I was only a foot away when a terrifying, eldritch voice called out through the flames and smoke, through my adrenaline and panicked breath.

“BIRDY!”

Matilda was visible on the other side of the barrier that had once separated the court from spectator seating. Now, it was crumbled enough that any sense of separation was completely lost. She hopped over it and began to run towards me, her face a mixture of blood and panic. Desperation kicked in, and I crawled faster as my breath hitched and whined. The bum hand went back to work, pain be damned, as I pulled myself through the doorway.

Every hair stood on end as I passed through the static-charged window and found myself in a blue, tunnel-like void. The same as the one I’d come here in — or one very similar. I tried to draw in a breath but found my lungs unable to do so. Wherever this was, air wasn’t. 

I crawled faster and faster over top of the transparent, seemingly energy-based floor as the air still in my lungs faded. There was the distinct sensation of thick, plastic-like thuds as my knees slapped down on the blue in my mad dash to escape. There couldn’t have been more than six feet between the two openings in the tunnel. One, where I’d come from, was black, orange, and a bright, distinct yellow. The other was sort of tan and gray towards the bottom. Sweat was pouring down my cheeks and over my eyes as I thrust a hand through the other opening. It rippled like the surface of water, and I felt my fingers come into contact against a cold, tile-like surface. My other hand followed, and then my head.

My vision collapsed into a frenzy of stars and colorful moving dots as a blast of cold hit my face. The subsequent gasp of air, too, was chilled. The obstacles clouding my vision faded, and in short order I was able to make out three things as I pulled myself in up to my chest.

First were the cinder block walls making up the room painted with that school-like coat of tanish-white and a gray, tiled floor. Second was an open doorway at the other end of the room, one that wasn’t sized for a giant. And third was the wide-eyed stare a woman with short black hair and pale skin was giving me as she sat behind a small desk to the left of the archway. And, actually, there was one other thing I noticed as I stared right back at said woman.

“You’re normal-sized!” I screamed.

“Oh my god!” she cried, scooting her chair back against the wall with a look of horror that was sudden, not something that had been ongoing before now. Did she not know about the explosions? The attack?

I reached for the desk as I pulled myself further in. “Please, you’ve gotta—“ I’d only just latched my fingers behind the interior curve of the desk’s leg cutout when I felt something yank me backward with an incredible force.

“S-shit!” I hissed. The desk scrapped across the floor and me along with it before catching against the side of the archway as the portal swallowed me first up to my flat chest, then neck, and finally head as I was plunged back into the liminal tunnel. There, pulling at one of my ankles, was Matilda.

“Birdy!” she roared. “No! Let go!” Most of her was inside of the tunnel with me, though part of her left foot and her left arm up to the elbow was submerged in the rippling surface of the other window. I took in a breath of air, shocked I was able to do so when I couldn’t before.

“You let go!” I cried back at her. She leaned forward, bringing her left foot wholly to rest within the tunnel. As she did, and it could have been the light playing tricks on my eyes, but she seemed to… shrink? It was almost imperceptible, but the added leverage I could feel in the hand still desperately holding onto the desk stuck on the other side told me it was nevertheless real. 

I pulled harder, swinging my other hand up and through the window to join the other. Matilda inched further in, but her grip remained strong. Again, I could make out a tiny tremble to her silhouette as she seemed to grow slightly smaller still. Regardless, she still possessed a huge height advantage, and my grip on the desk was weakening rapidly.

“Bad girl!” she cursed at me. “I have to get you to safety, you little brat! Let go for Mommy, now!”

“No!” I spat back at her. “I’m done being your fucking doll!” One last heave was all I could exert through my arms, though she didn’t budge any further inward.
“Language!”

It was a losing battle. Static was coursing over the top of my skin, leading to a weakening of my finger strength. I didn’t have the strength to throw her balance off any further, and she could outlast me. But that didn’t mean I had to give up. Not until the last ounce of energy my body could muster evaporated.

And then, something funny finally happened.

CRACKOOOOOM!

Matilda looked behind her and then back at me, not understanding what was coming. 

But I did.

I wasn’t going back home. But neither was she. And I’d never, ever be stuck in that fucking crib again. If both of us had to die to achieve that, well, that was perfectly acceptable by me. Of course, as these inner narrations go, this understanding was nearly instantaneous, as was the formation of the last words I would ever speak. I’d been saving them for a long time.

“Mames mi culo mi pendejita mamita de duendes!”

Matilda’s jaw dropped. “You can speak Spanish?!”

The first thing to go as the electricity and heat and pressure poured through her window were our clothes, all of which disappeared in a flurry of ash and cinder. I can’t say I didn’t smile as the diaper melted away from my skin.

Then, I simply bore witness as everything that composed Matilda’s body exploded outward. The raven black hair, those emerald green eyes, even the porcelain skin down to that tiny, insignificant mole. All of it disintegrated in the implosion of the window behind her. Mere dust to a strong gust of wind. Her organs followed in the transmogrification to particulate, leaving only a skeleton which stood only briefly in a long, agonized scream before it, too, blew away into the vast emptiness of nothing we found ourselves in as both windows collapsed.

It’s important that I note a particularly relevant detail for the discerning viewer. For as I described Matilda’s instantaneous evaporation into nothingness, I, too, found myself similarly caught in the crosswind of a scientific backfire far beyond my scope of understanding. It was with that same smile that I faced my fate head-on even as my flesh and bone disappeared before my very eyes.

 

*    *    *

 

Light.

Dark.

Brilliance.

Void.

Clarity in the absence of void.

A total obscurity of light. 

A persistent tug pulled at me over and over. My mind and soul ebbed and flowed in a way that was impossible to track by time. It merely felt that I was. And then wasn’t. Over and over. Ad infinitum. The stretch of a muscle was fleeting in one instance before the nothing returned. Twitch of a finger in another. On and off, off and on sensation would briefly return before fading again. This played out time and again until, finally, the tug at the core of my being became unrelenting. Brightness that didn’t fade graced me once more. I hadn’t had eyes in so long. The ability to see was a privilege I’d forgotten I’d once had. 

All too suddenly sight restored itself, subjecting me to the vision of space rushing forth and past. Stars blurred into lines and clouds larger than I could ever see whizzed past faster than I could comprehend. In the far distance, shapes were forming behind the stars still rushing to me. Lines. Cracks in… something. Like a self-completing puzzle, things became clearer and clearer as I was pulled closer and closer to this unknown destination. The faint sensation of air tickled lungs I didn’t know I had until—

Gravity. Hard. Cold. Wet.

My arms slapped against hard, jagged rock, sending water droplets back up at my face. The rest of my body pushed deep into the soil beneath, itself wet and eager to drown my limbs into the earth’s embrace. Every muscle tensed and trembled like a newly-born foal as I struggled to keep my head off the ground. Balance wasn’t possible without readjustment. An instinct screamed at me from the base of my skull, and I opened my mouth.

Air.

I gasped as it cascaded down my throat and into my waiting, desperate lungs. Another breath, and another after that. Had I really forgotten to breathe? But — no! Inventory first. Personal reflection second.  Sight. Sight was back. Breathing was, too. I was… cold. Right. Cold. Annnd systems check. Blinking worked. Closing mouth… and opening mouth again to breathe. Didn’t forget. Just noting. Shoulders worked. Arms, hands, fingers. My spine, hips and—

Oh my god.

The gentle inward curve of my big toe as I flexed it in and out was indescribable. My legs… my legs worked! I could feel my legs again! I rolled over onto my back as I stretched my legs out and inward. Ankles bent in all the correct angles. All toes responsive. Knees worked as intended. 

And for the most important piece of functionality…

I turned over again and steadied my hands and feet against the rock and soil. The barest sensation of wet was pulsing against my back in small, repeating taps. I disregarded it, instead focusing on the task at hand.

Pushing up with my arms and hands, I was able to pull my legs and feet into a crouch. My foot moved inward a step until my knee bent beneath my chest. Then, lift.

I was standing up.

I WAS STANDING UP!

My balance weary, I took a few precautionary steps, each a resounding success if the goal was simply “remain standing”. I wasn’t sure if the wet pouring down my face was the wet that had been on my back, or… tears; tears from my eyes. But the jubilation building higher and higher in my chest could hardly be contained. 

Speaking of, two uncovered mounds adorned my chest, a sight I hadn’t seen outside of bath-time or breakfast in a long, long time. Whatever had fixed my legs, fixed the rest of my body, too. It was a miracle. An honest-to-god miracle. But which one did I thank? Was it a mixture of them? I’d prayed to so many… would I incur some sort of holy wrath by not thanking the correct god first?

The momentary reverie was short-lived as I realized what my chest being uncovered meant. I was butt-ass naked. And, as I looked at my surroundings, I picked up a few other bits of information. It was night. I was also currently located at the bottom of what appeared to be a gigantic hole, complete with small rocks all around me and wooden barricades visible up at the surface of the ground where the crater’s wall rose by the sharpest degree. It was also raining if we’re being really thorough.

I let out a small mumble beneath my breath. “How the hell did I…”

Such a preponderance was never completed as when brushing the dripping water from my brow, a new detail demanded my attention. The flesh of each hand had become a stark white and was radiating a faint, glowing neon blue energy. The further in you looked, the more distinct the small, webbed structures that were my veins became. And as rain splashed against my altered flesh, small little plumes of steam rose up again when the droplets evaporated on contact.

 

————————————————————

EDIT: Updated Amy’s dialogue to better match the S rule. It is now even harder to decipher, as intended. Thanks!

[Tailie]

You have my attention, please more.

[MightyBirdy]

8 hours ago, Tailie said:

You have my attention, please more.

We’ll see! I’ve deffo got a bunch of ideas for a continuation.

[SoftEgg]

Absolutely gripping read. I really appreciate the build into little things as tidbits of Dio's situation are revealed progressively. I usually don't have a stomach for horror, psychological or otherwise (and this might not be horror for some) but I enjoyed the general experience of reading this immensely. 

[Personalias]

Fucking fantastic use of dialogue, simile, metaphor, and descriptive language to ensnare the reader's senses.  You do smart and strong worldbuilding playing on what fans of Diaper Dimension Genre likely already know, make distinctions where it suits your plot and your own sensibilities so that it's YOURS and then end it with a most interesting cliff hanger.  

Brava.

[Mugi]

Really good start! And lot's of suspense at the end of the chapter ?

[MightyBirdy]

1 hour ago, Personalias said:

Fucking fantastic use of dialogue, simile, metaphor, and descriptive language to ensnare the reader's senses.  You do smart and strong worldbuilding playing on what fans of Diaper Dimension Genre likely already know, make distinctions where it suits your plot and your own sensibilities so that it's YOURS and then end it with a most interesting cliff hanger.  

Brava.

Oh geez, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry……. ?

 

thank you!!

[BabyJilly_S]

That was terrific. So very well written.

Soon as I read about the arena and Sebastion Mawnee I thought that here comes some messed up Hunger Games shit. 

Then it all changed, utterly intrigued now.  

[MightyBirdy]

59 minutes ago, Mugi said:

Really good start! And lot's of suspense at the end of the chapter ?

Thank you! I appreciate your time immensely!

[Tailie]

On 9/1/2021 at 1:23 PM, Personalias said:

Fucking fantastic use of dialogue, simile, metaphor, and descriptive language to ensnare the reader's senses.  You do smart and strong worldbuilding playing on what fans of Diaper Dimension Genre likely already know, make distinctions where it suits your plot and your own sensibilities so that it's YOURS and then end it with a most interesting cliff hanger.  

Brava.

The sheer level of concise wording in this praise is admirable.

[MightyBirdy]

3 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

That was terrific. So very well written.

Soon as I read about the arena and Sebastion Mawnee I thought that here comes some messed up Hunger Games shit. 

Then it all changed, utterly intrigued now.  

Thank you!! If I continue, I’ll try to keep people on their toes!

3 hours ago, Tailie said:

The sheer level of concise wording in this praise is admirable. ?

I know, right?? ?

[Cya]

Few can get the Diaper Dimension right. You definitely did, but where do you go from here? Something tells me that Dio isn't back in her Dimension. 

[SGTbaby]

Wow just awesomely wow!!

[MightyBirdy]

8 hours ago, Mugi said:

Really good start! And lot's of suspense at the end of the chapter ?

I know!! The suspense is killing me!

2 hours ago, Cya said:

Few can get the Diaper Dimension right. You definitely did, but where do you go from here? Something tells me that Dio isn't back in her Dimension. 

What do you mean? Clearly she’s back on Earth…

[treasuresman]

Wow, just wow ????????

[MightyBirdy]

On 9/2/2021 at 9:47 PM, treasuresman said:

Wow, just wow ????????

Thank you!!

[Daddy Wuffster]

Absolutely wonderful DD story, thoroughly enjoyed reading this from beginning to end, can't wait for more if there's some to come!

[Cute_Kitten]

Solid prose and overall writing. Especially enjoyed the ending with the "terrorist" attack on the Adoptathon, and the ending with Matilda and Dio in the collapsing portals. ? (Readers and Littles would see that as a good thing, but no doubt Amazon society would label it a "terrorist" attack. ?)

[WBDaddy]

On 9/1/2021 at 4:23 PM, Personalias said:

Fucking fantastic use of dialogue, simile, metaphor, and descriptive language to ensnare the reader's senses.  You do smart and strong worldbuilding playing on what fans of Diaper Dimension Genre likely already know, make distinctions where it suits your plot and your own sensibilities so that it's YOURS and then end it with a most interesting cliff hanger.  

Brava.

Yeah, this is fucking spectacular, really.  Blurring the lines between poetry and prose, this is a tightrope act that leaves us all watching as the author wobbles, probably more for dramatic effect than any actual loss of balance, in the middle of the big top. 

[MightyBirdy]

On 9/4/2021 at 9:21 AM, Daddy Wuffster said:

Absolutely wonderful DD story, thoroughly enjoyed reading this from beginning to end, can't wait for more if there's some to come!

I’m trying to make time for actually writing Part 2, but I *do* have a lot of notes! Thank you!

On 9/9/2021 at 9:57 PM, Cute_Kitten said:

Solid prose and overall writing. Especially enjoyed the ending with the "terrorist" attack on the Adoptathon, and the ending with Matilda and Dio in the collapsing portals. ? (Readers and Littles would see that as a good thing, but no doubt Amazon society would label it a "terrorist" attack. ?)

As one of my favorite authors would say of the Amazons, “Typical.” Thanks for the feedback!!

On 9/10/2021 at 12:46 AM, WBDaddy said:

Yeah, this is fucking spectacular, really.  Blurring the lines between poetry and prose, this is a tightrope act that leaves us all watching as the author wobbles, probably more for dramatic effect than any actual loss of balance, in the middle of the big top. 

Oh gosh, thank you!

[BabySofia]

I've been behind on reading new stories due to life. Glad I just finally managed to circle back to this tab. This is really well written as others have said. Hope you post a continuation at some point soon!

[MightyBirdy]

13 hours ago, BabySofia said:

I've been behind on reading new stories due to life. Glad I just finally managed to circle back to this tab. This is really well written as others have said. Hope you post a continuation at some point soon!

Planning on it! Thanks!!!

[kirababy]

Enjoyed this too much, i fear.   Well done.