Corporate Espionage (Chapters 9 Up. Finished)

[Personalias]

Chapter 1

There comes a time in every person’s life when their code of ethics collides against temptation.  When the dust settles either the code or the temptation is knocked on its ass; it’s opposite standing victorious.

Ethical codes may vary widely.  For some it’s the deeply held tenets of a religion, or a philosophy that has been honed over long study and personal experience.  For Matthew McKinley, it was as simple as the Golden Rule and not wanting to be arrested.

Conversely, the temptations of the world are varied, but can often be sorted into a few broad categories such as  money, relief from boredom, and sex.  How telling it was that often temptation came in the form of meeting basic physiological and psychological needs; almost like some crazy man in the sky set the rules and the needs in direct opposition to each other.

Worse yet, Matthew was faced with all three of his big temptations: money, entertainment, and even a hint of sex.

“You want me to do what?” Matthew asked. “Seriously?”  He blinked again, as if that might clear up the babbling brook of nonsense that he’d just been pitched.  “You know that’s illegal, right?”

The older woman sitting across the desk from Matthew folded her hands on the table.  “Only if you get caught, Mattie.”

Mattie.  No one had called him that since he was in diapers. The woman on the other end of the desk had known him that long.  Probably changed a couple, too. Definitely had made some. Matthew’s family and hers went way back, from before Mrs. Northeaster hit it big in the business world and moved out of the suburbs.

History wasn’t the only factor keeping him from walking out the door.  The corporate headquarters for Northeaster Care was a very fancy, very expensive looking, very tall building.  A lot of money was going through this building these days.  Mrs. Northeaster had been very good with her husband’s money.  Better than he’d been.  This was her office.

“You’re asking me to do something illegal,” Matthew repeated.

Mrs. Northeaster, her hair now completely silvered with over two decades of corporate experience (a word here which means constant stress), didn’t react except to say, “Not really, Mattie. This sort of thing happens all the time.”

The young man, not quite thirty, felt gobsmacked by the sheer brazenness.  “What do you mean it happens all the time?”

“Pepsi spies on Coke. Honda knows where Ford is up to. Starbucks got where it is because it outmaneuvered Dunkin’.”  The barest hint of a smile did not reach the woman’s eyes.  “It’s just business, Mattie.”
“Isn’t that what, like, trade shows and expos are for?” Matthew replied.

“That’s for the consumer,” Mrs. Northeaster said.  “Big business reacts in real time.  I can’t outmaneuver my competition if I don’t know what moves they’re planning.”

Matthew rubbed his temples.  “So let me get this straight,” he said.  “You want me to try and get a job at PharmaCor -”

“Something entry level.  Like the mailroom,” Mrs. Northeaster interrupted.  “Nothing to draw too much attention to yourself.  Nothing where you’ll be missed if you don’t show up to work.”

“Right,” Matthew said, “and then you want me to hack their computers from the inside, so that you can steal their company secrets?”

“Not steal,” Mrs. Northeaster said, sounding almost offended. “Just look at.  ‘Steal’ implies that we’re going to delete their files or try and copy them for ourselves.  It’s so...vulgar.”

“Then what are you planning to do?”

The third person in the meeting spoke up.  “Just take a little peek and try and predict PharmaCorp’s next move.”  Candice Northeaster was seated beside Matthew.  She placed her hand gently on his arm. “Make sure nothing they’re cooking up is too similar to what we’re cooking up.”     

Candice Northeaster was Matthew’s age.  They’d been friends since they were babies; taken baths together.  Candice had grown up in this company, and in lieu of baby pictures she had posters and box covers from when she was Northeaster Care’s literal poster baby.  One of those posters was right behind her mother, with her two year old self giggling in nothing but a pink t-shirt and a Bun-Bums diaper on.  

They’d both long since outgrown diapers though.  And Matthew couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a bath with her. Looking at her now, with her dark hair and big, perky boobs,he might like to make a new memory.  The temptation of money was the thing keeping Matthew’s ears open, but it had been the implied promise of sex that had gotten him first through the door.

“What are you even looking for?” Matthew wanted a reason, an irrefutable one, as to why he should walk out of the office building and go back to fucking with customer support scammers. “It’s not like there’s a whole lot going on with diapers, anyways.”

“You’re right,” Candice said.  “It’s pretty much just fashion, these days.  Wetness indicator or no?  What decoration goes on the front?  How flexible is the waistband?  That kind of thing.  What bells or whistles can you attach to it to make Mom and Dad want to buy it for their little one.”

“Okay…” Matthew said.  “And?”

“It’s no different,” Mrs. Northeaster said, “than peeking at someone else’s hand in a game of poker.”

“That’s still cheating.”

Mrs. Northeaster stood up.  He’d forgotten how tall she was.  How imposing.  “If Proctor & Gamble are the McDonald’s of the diaper business, and Kimberly Clark is Burger King, then Northeaster Care is close to becoming Wendy’s. Right now we’re Whataburger. We’re good, but we’re still very regional.   The thing standing in our way is PharmaCorp. ”

Matthew felt intrigued.  “How?”  He leaned forward a bit.

“We think PharmaCorp is negotiating to get Bluey on their next line of diapers,” The C.E.O. explained.  “It might be why Bluey’s people aren’t returning our calls.  Bluey’s very popular right now.  That kind of endorsement could put us over the moon.”

“With a cartoon character?”

Candice’s hand moved up to his shoulder.  “You’d be surprised what branding can do, hun.  It’s why Huggies has Disney characters and Pampers and Luvs do stuff with PBS.”

“What are you gonna do if that’s the case with Bluey?”

“Make Bluey’s people a better offer,” Mrs. Northeaster said.

Alarm bells rang in Matthew's brain.  “Wouldn’t that be the same as stea-?”

“When you helped take down that scam call center in India, the people helping you were breaking the law by trespassing and spying.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “But those people were stealing from the elderly.”  What he didn’t say was how he’d stayed behind a computer screen for the entirety of that takedown.  There’d been no real risk to him.

“And these people have done the same to us,” Mrs. Northeaster slammed her fists on the desk.  “We had the idea of bringing back gendered diapers two years ago, but PharmaCorp’s people stole it from us first.  We just want to steal something back for once!”

Matthew sat up a little straighter.  “So this is revenge?”

“No!” Mrs. Northeaster started. “It’s-”

“Yes,” Candice interrupted.  “We’re trying to get them back and we need your help to do it.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re like family, Mattie” Those big puppy dog eyes stared into her.  “We can’t trust anybody else.  Every other private investigator we’ve hired has been just as likely to turn on us as hide our own secrets.”

Mrs. Northeaster walked around the desk.  “Every pro in the tristate area is known to our competitors.  They won’t see you coming.  You’ll give us the element of surprise that we need, Mattie.  You’d be helping us and you’d be well compensated.”

“Hmmm….” New hardware and reverse hacking software didn’t come cheap.  He could do a lot of good with the money the Northeaster’s were offering.

“We’d be very grateful,” Candice added in a whisper.  “Very...very grateful.”

A chance to help old friends get some payback, the possibility that he could be rewarded in more than just money?  The temptation was too much.

“Okay,” Matthew said.  “I’m in.”

By the end of the week, Mattie would be in more than just a bit of corporate espionage.

[LtlGary]

Amazing start. I can't wait to see where this goes!

[Personalias]

Chapter 2

Toto’s ‘Africa’ droned on the fourth floor of PharmaCorp’s corporate headquarters.  Easy listening music hits of the 70’s 80’s and 90’s was on constant play inside the building.  As a way to keep himself less visibly nervous, Matthew had started to keep track of the number of times he’d heard certain songs.  This was the fifth time he’d heard Toto in the span of three days.

That had been a mistake.  It was no wonder weapons weren’t allowed inside the building.  If Matthew had had a gun on him he’d have been sorely tempted to blow his brains out.  The human brain can only stand so much Toto.  If Matthew had to listen to another playback of Phil Collins’s ‘In the air tonight’ he might just turn himself in.

“Excuse me, sir or madam,” he would say.  “Would you please call the police? I am here to try and steal company secrets for Northeaster Care, but I’ve just lost the will to go on.  Why yes, it was Phil Collins that finally broke me. Well done.”  Again, it didn’t surprise him in the least that PharmaCorp had an in-house pharmacy that sold all of its products like some new take on the old Company Store routine.  Keep everyone bored, depressed, and medicated and they’d drudge along for you.

The fact that Mrs. Northeaster’s company probably wasn’t much better didn’t phase him.  Northeaster Care was financing this little sting, and fantasies of Candice’s undying gratitude spurred him onward..  Also, he had distinctly heard Coldplay while walking through their corporate office.  Not much better, but still more current.  Certainly better than R.E.M.

In all seriousness, Matthew felt like the equivalent of a cop on a stakeout in one of those action movies.  The worst part was the waiting.  Five minutes of action preceded by hours and hours of waiting.  At least in the movies, the cop had a partner to talk to and make witty banter with; plus the audience automatically skipped past the tedious park.  

Matthew was flying solo on this and only had himself to entertain.  Hence why he was drafting up a confession letter based on the banality of bland ass out of date office music.
“Mail,” he said, passing it off to each cubicle.  “Here you are.”

Getting the mail room job had been deceptively easy.  Even in a profitable, well run company, entry level jobs were still high turnover and there were constant vacancies to fill.  The fake work history he’d drafted up- leaving out his computer expertise of course- had been readily processed and accepted, and orientation and training consisted mainly of watching a dull video and signing an NDA agreement.

Matthew had not signed his real last name, of course. His fake social security number wasn’t going to hold up to prolonged scrutiny, but Matthew intended to be out of this place by payday and back to Northeaster Care the next state over.  This would take longer, but the whole idea of this was just a smash and grab.

“Thank you.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Matthew had noted that within the company there were two types of people on his delivery route.  People who acknowledged his presence and people who didn’t.  Planning his next steps, he paid careful attention to the people who didn’t.  The folks who acknowledged the lowly mailroom delivery boy, were either decent people, or so low on the pecking order that they thought themselves on near equal footing with him.

Also, in general, they seemed more careless.  Left their desks and cubicles unattended.  Easier to get access and steal from, but there was little chance their PC’s had anything of value.  Maybe an email or something that might hint at something larger; but nothing substantive.  Nothing to report back about.  Matthew had confirmed as much yesterday.  He’d managed to download Anydesk and remote access several desktops to people who’d forgotten to turn their computers off on their lunch break.  Trusting souls, but with nothing major to report.  It didn’t help his search that PharmaCorp made more than just baby products.

There was some vague chatter about marketing working on ‘Project Sleeperz’, but otherwise it was about maintaining or severing ties with various media companies and advertisers.  The ‘blue diapers for boys and pink diapers for girls’ fad they’d apparently renewed had run its course and there was much internal discussion onto whether to discontinue the line of ‘Peekers’ - named so because colors weren’t meant to hidden, so here was a diaper that could peek out and get shown off - or to try and spin reinvigoration.  Perhaps make it a spring and summer line when it’d be hotter and easier for parents to forego pants altogether.  It had worked with the Huggies and the denim diapers.

That didn’t smell like the paydirt that Matthew was working for, though.  ‘Project Sleeperz’ was the real big kahuna.  The thing that his employers and family friends needed the forewarning about.

That’s why Matthew had taken interest in the people who didn’t talk to him when he delivered memos and mail.  They were the ones who were either so far up the payscale that they felt he was below their notice, and the ones so busy and focused (possibly with something very important) that Matthew’s presence barely registered to them.  

This is where the big fish swam. The careful fish.  The suspicious fish. Higher risk.  Higher reward. He didn’t have the time to form any kind of personal relationship with them, to sucker them into letting their guard down or leaving something unattended.  Matthew was going to have to be a hawk, ready to swoop down on any juicy tidbits the moment an opportunity presented itself.

Such an opportunity came just after lunch with the end of Toto’s ‘Africa’.  Matthew had just finished navigating the maze of cubicles for the Sales and Marketing Department and was wheeling up to the offices of people important enough to merit something.  

The label on the door read “Ennis Uggins.”  Despite the ugly name, the man in the office was fairly put together.  Mid to late thirties. Clean shaven and clean cut.  Something of an amalgamation between the Don Draper aesthetic tempered with just middle America Dad energy.  The photo of his wife and kids that Matthew had spied previously created such a narrative.  A family man slipping out of fitness and into a nice comfortable dad bod.
“Mail,” he said, calling in.  

The executive was already getting up from his chair. His face contorted with discomfort but he spared a glance.  “Just leave it on my desk…” he squinted at Matthew’s name badge.  “Mattie.  Tacos aren’t agreeing with me.”  The man clutched his stomach and muscled his way past Matthew and his mail cart to start hurrying off to the executive bathroom.

Mathew shook his head in disgust.  First words the guy had said to him all week, and he go the name wrong.  Mattie? What is it with Mattie?  Did he look like a Mattie?  Matthew rubbed his chin and resolved to grow a beard.

He left the mail on the desk and peered at the executive’s desktop.  The screensaver hadn’t kicked in yet!  Matthew had access! No password required!  Right there for the picking!

Score!

Quietly, Matthew shut the office door and shuffled to the computer.  He’d already made sure to muscle in the mail cart where he went.  It was terribly inefficient, and any mail clerk worth anything would have been smart enough to leave the cart outside.  No one passing by Uggins’ office would see an unattended mail cart, though.  Matthew wasn’t really a mail clerk; so his sense of pride wasn’t in any kind of danger.

It took less than a minute for Matthew to download the remote access software and add in the programs necessary to access Uggins’s computer.  By the time Uggins made it back to his office, Matthew was long gone and oddly cheery.

“She’s just a small town girl,” he hummed to the next round of music. “Livin’ in a lonely world…!”

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

The Air BnB Matthew was staying in was about thirty minutes from PharmaCorp’s corporate headquarters if he took the freeway.  Mrs. Northeaster had booked it privately under a pseudonym and was paying for it.  It wouldn’t do for him to be hiding out in a hotel.  There was still long term implications dealing with his fake I.D.  Payroll would figure out that his listed address wasn’t his real address in due time, but Matthew wasn’t planning on collecting a paycheck; not from PharmaCorp.

It was just past Six O’Clock when he got back and had enough time to lock the doors, draw the shades, and open up his laptop.  Just as expected, he had full access to the executive’s desktop and everything saved therein.  

All he had to do was wait and watch long enough for his mark to go home for the night.  Then the real fun could begin. Like working in the mailroom, this was a stakeout too, but a much more exciting one.  Matthew didn’t always get people, but he was infinitely more enticed watching computer screens.

This was the kind of patience that he was used to.  The same tricks he’d used to fuck with scammers were the ones he was employing here.  He’d found one of them with a conscience and convinced them to betray their fellows by downloading Matthew’s particular brand of spyware.  The only real difference, operationally was that Matthew had to be the mole and the hacker.  Thankfully he was getting paid more.

Shit.  He was getting paid!  Thinking of that, Matthew almost didn’t mind that he was technically slipping to the dark side.

It was nearly nine before his victim’s screen started showing signs of slowing down.  “Damn this guy works late,” Matthew said to himself.  Flurries of emails, speeches, and proposals, all laced with corporate speak that Matthew didn’t even try to understand.  Just in case, he’d been recording the whole thing.  Maybe there was something Candice and her mom could use; but nothing jumped out at him yet.

Finally, the mouse on the other end started to initiate shut down and Matthew leapt into action.  

“Nope,” he said to himself.  “Not done yet, my dude.  Not even close.” A few quick keystrokes and he blacked out the computer screen on the other end.  To anyone still at the PharmaCorp office, the monitor on that particular desk would appear asleep.

Having already hacked the webcam, he waited until his mark left the office and turned out the lights, none the wiser.

Feeling like victory was in his grasp, Matthew took the last bite of a pepperoni pizza he’d ordered, and let the sauce and cheese slide down his throat while the spice meat danced on his tongue.  Pizza and Booze: The only things that tasted better when completely consumed.

It didn’t take long for Matthew to find what he was looking for, linked to a larger file labeled “Upcoming Projects.”.

“Huh,” Matthew remarked.  “Sleeperz commercial First draft.  This looks like something.”  Tentatively he clicked and watched.

First draft was right. The audio component was complete but there was no footage on the screen; not of people.  In their place was more or less rough sketches and blocking, like a cartoon’s storyboard.  Through the rough outlines that blinked and flipped, it looked like a mother putting down a baby in its crib.

“For both you and your little one, sleep is important,” the soft feminine voice whispered.  “Neither of you want to wake up because of a wet diaper.  And leaks are the worst.  That’s why we’re introducing Sleeperz nighttime diapers.”

The storyboard sketches shifted to a more professional computer animated model, one that showed only the diaper and its features.

“Sleeperz has a more absorbent core that wicks away moisture from your baby’s skin, and combines it with strategically placed cooling gel so that even the warmth of wetness won’t be felt.  Your baby won’t even feel their nighttime accidents and remain blissfully asleep, ready to play in the morning.”

It went back to the flipbook-like storyboard format.

“Buy Sleeperz.  Because a good night’s sleep is priceless.”

Mattie blinked when the trailer ended. “Nighttime diapers?” he asked himself.  “That’s their big move?” He laughed.  Candice was right.  The baby industry pretty much was just fashion these days.  

Cooling gel? Super absorbent core?  Stopping babies from feeling like they’re peeing?  What was the point?  Not knowing when they were going was kind of the whole reason kids wore diapers.  And all diapers had the selling point of not leaking, so why advertise it for use during a particular time of the day?

Things really had gotten to the point of a problem looking for a solution.

Nevertheless, he packaged the whole file up and sent it to Candice.  Maybe she and her mom would use the info to announce their new line of daytime diapers or something.

Imagine Mattie’s surprise when he woke up the next morning drenched in his own piss.

Chapter 3

“Shit!” Mattie cursed through clenched teeth.  “Shit...shit...shit...shit…!”  The sun was just barely cresting through the window of his Air BnB but Mattie had already been awake for a good fifteen minutes.

When his alarm had gone off, he’d woken up to urine soaked sheets sticking to clammy thighs having wrapped around him as he tossed and turned in the middle of the night.   At present he was busy scrubbing the mattress; adding in soapy suds and stain remover; hoping the warm water would do its job.

“Shit...shit...shit...shit…”

Second day in a row, too.  Yesterday when it had happened, the would-be spy just ripped the sheets off and threw them into the washing machine alongside his soaked undies. He’d flipped the mattress and considered the matter resolved.  Northeaster Care would pay for the ruined mattress- if it was ever noticed in time to be tracked back to him.

As far as Mattie was concerned, he was out. Beginnings of advertising campaign leaked. Mission successful. Break out a bit of the bubbly and pour the champagne.  Job done. Time to celebrate.

Then he’d gotten the reply from Mrs. Northeaster:  “Get me more.” That was all that was written.  Problem was, he’d needed to lay low all yesterday, and the computer he’d hacked into didn’t have anything more juicy.  Not even a timeline or projected release date.



That was yesterday.  Today, he was scrubbing the stained mattress and cursing under his breath.   HIs boxer briefs were still stained, too.  He didn't have the presence of mind to take them off this time.  Mattie could only hope that the scrubbing would be enough and that he wouldn’t be late for work.

“Goddamnit. Get. The.  Fuck. Out. Stupid. Stain!”   If he hadn’t been so absolutely frustrated, Mattie might have appreciated the parallels between himself and a certain Shakespearean character known for fruitlessly trying to scrub away a guilty conscience. “Why? Won’t? It? Clean?”

A notification pinged on his desktop.  That was enough for the damp rag to be plopped into the sloshing bucket. Another email from Northeaster Care.  “Positive they have products that are further along.  Keep digging.”

Mattie ran the palm of his hand down his face and exhaled.  This is not what he’d agreed to. Not at all.  Between the boring drudgery, the looming anxiety of keeping up his cover, and his sudden nighttime incontinence, Mattie was no longer having much fun.  The big paycheck at the end and the chance to get into Candice’s panties though…

He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the laptop’s clock.  “Shit!” he hissed.  He’d spent too long cleaning up his accident.  (Those were thoughts he’d never thought he’d have.) Couldn’t be late for his shift in the mailroom or he’d draw attention to himself.

*********************************************************************************************
“If I could turn back time,” Cher circa 1989 belted out over the speakers, “If I could find a way.  I’d take back those words that’ve hurt you, and you’d stay!”

Mattie bit his tongue and rolled his eyes. Even at the company’s pharmacy, stupid music was being broadcast.  There was no escaping it. Even in the restroom there was no escape.

Mattie had been to the restroom several times that day.  Two wet beds in a row had rattled him and he’d taken the earliest opportunity to relieve himself every time he felt the slightest ache in his bladder.  Internal correction: not the earliest opportunity.  The earliest opportunity would have been peeing directly into his pants.

That had been another thing bothering Mattie today.  He’d been so wrapped up in making it in time for work that he hadn’t had the time to shower the stink off of him before work.  It was subtle, but everytime he breathed in, Mattie could swear he smelled the faint odor of fermenting ammonia and old piss.  Karma? Unlikely.  Mattie didn’t believe in such things.

As far as he could tell, no one else noticed; no comments or wrinkled noses.  Just to be on the safe side, Mattie had taken several potty breaks for the sole purpose of wetting a paper towel and tabbing his crotch in the handicap stall.  The ad-libbed baby wipe didn’t fix things completely.  Mattie could swear he still smelled it as soon as the water was dried from his pubes.  It could have just been in his head, though that sentiment didn’t help.

During his most recent trip to scrub away the scent of wet bed, Mattie noticed that the handicapped stalls all also had pull-down changing tables.  A bit of baby powder would have covered any lingering smell right up, he’d thought to himself.  The irony of his situation considering what he was here to steal wasn’t lost on Mattie this time.

One thought led to another, and that’s how Mattie landed up in the employee pharmacy.

“Next!”

Mattie stepped up to counter.  His shift in the mailroom was over and he put himself last in line for the conversation he was about to have.  

The woman in the white lab coat had auburn hair done up in a bun and black rimmed glasses. She was also a few years older than Mattie, and in the same way that high school seniors still look like kids to people in their early twenties, when Mattie looked at the pharmacist he saw an adult even though she was thirty at most.  Didn’t make her any less attractive to him, though.

“Card please,” she said.

Uncomfortably, Mattie started digging around in his back pocket for his wallet. “I uh, haven’t even told you what I’m picking up…?”

A pink painted finger nail pointed at the I.D. badge clipped onto his shirt. “That one, sweetie. Employee I.D.”

“Oh,” his hand went to his chest and took off the badge, handing it to her.  “Thank you,” he focused on her nametag.  “Virginia.”

She took the badge and ran it through a scanner.  “Everybody calls me Ginni.”

“Okay, Ginni.”  Might as well make small talk.  Make this less embarrassing.

Ginni turned her head and looked at a computer screen and paused for whatever data PharmaCorp thought it had on him.  “Sorry about this,” she said. “Gotta make sure you’re one of us. Okay...Mattie,” the pharmacist said.  “What can I do for you?”

Mattie blinked. It felt weird having someone call him Mattie.  His nametag clearly said ‘Matthew’, and hearing the more childish nickname left a bad taste in his mouth.  Only then, did Matthew actively realize that he’d been thinking of himself as Mattie the whole day…

“I’m looking for some over the counter stuff,” Matthew said, lowering his voice to a crowd whisper.  “Nothing major.  I’ve just been having...um…” his words were starting to fail him.  What was the technical term for having pee-pee accidents in one’s sleep?  “Nighttime Urinesis…?”

The pharmacist raised an eyebrow.  “Nighttime Urinesis?  Do you mean nocturnal enuresis? Bed wetting? You’re wetting the bed? You’re a bed wetter?”  Save for some other white coats  milling around, they were alone.  No one was behind him in line, and Cher was well into her second verse. 

At the same time, Matthew’s heart raced as if the woman’s words were thundering through the entire corporate skyscraper.

“Bed wetting?”

“You’re wetting the bed?”

“You’re a bed wetter?”

Matthew’s face flushed with pure embarrassment.  Why’d she have to repeat herself?  Why’d she have to be so pretty?  He almost wished it were an old bald man standing in front of him. Then, he might at least expect a ‘me too’.

“I’m just having some trouble dealing with stress.” It was a lie, but not a full one.  “And I think it’s effecting me.”

“And you need something over the counter?”

Suddenly, the tops of Matthew’s shoes seemed very interesting. “Yeah…” he rasped.

Ginn the pharmacist frowned.  “Beyond limiting liquid intake and telling you to set an alarm, I don’t know if there’s much in the way of non-prescription stuff I can give you.”

“I figured.” He blew air out past his lips in frustration. He started to walk off.  “Thanks anyw-”

“Wait!”

Matthew froze and turned back around. 
Ginni held up a finger and then walked out of sight for a moment.  Matthew took the time to walk back up to the counter and lean over, trying to figure out what was going on.  Briefly he considered using the opening to get into the pharmacy’s computers, but those likely didn’t have anything he needed.  He needed corporate strategies, not pill inventories.

The pretty young woman returned with a bulky package wrapped in brown paper in her arms.  “Okay,” she said. “Promise not to freak out?”

Gravely, Matthew nodded. “Sure.”

“These are high grade medical quality diapers,” she said.

Matthew did not like where this was going. “Uh-oh…”

“Hear me out,” the pharmacist said, patiently.  “PharmaCorp designed these for hospitals and nursing homes. Situations where a person probably couldn’t make it to the toilet and probably couldn’t change themselves, but…”

There was a story here, and Matthew felt himself being drawn in.  “But…?”  A hint of a smile was playing at his lips.

“But the factory in China that makes them fucked up.  We’ve got a new brand of baby diapers coming out and some idiot screwed up. Now, there’s an entire batch of adult diapers with baby decorations on them and PharmaCorp can’t get rid of them.”  The package slid out to Matthew.  “Take them.  On the house. If you’re worried about being embarrassed you don’t have to tell anybody el-”

“Free?” Matthew spoke over her. “Did you just say free?”

“It’s not ideal for your situation, but it’s better than nothing.  Less cleanup in the morning.”

“But it’s free?”

“Yeah,” she smirked. “Can’t give this stuff away, normally.  Take it and use what you’d save to buy ramen or something.”

“Deal!”

He practically snatched the package the rest of the way out of the woman’s grasp. “I’ll take them!”  Truth be told, Matthew wasn’t thrilled about needing diapers.  What really got his attention was the tidbit about them being large versions of a PharmaCorp’s newest baby diaper.  He couldn’t conceal his excitement, so he masked it behind a veil of frugality. 

This could be just the opening he needed.
**********************************************************************************************************

Matthew couldn’t get back to the air BnB fast enough.  He rushed to the bedroom and tore open the brown paper packaging.  If it had been a gazelle, he would have been a lion rending its flesh. 

And in the gazell’s flesh was ten, mostly white, plastic backed, folded, crinkly rectangles, tightly packed together. Matthew plucked one out and examined it.

Not having kids, but having watched way too many commercials in researching this gig, Matthew immediately recognized the differences between what he had in his hand and what went on a regular baby’s bottom.  For one thing the texture was a smooth, soft plastic instead of the faux cloth.  For another the diapers were big enough that they had to be folded in thirds instead of halves.  The four plastic tapes on the wings differed from the two velcro grips.

The decorations though?  Exactly what would be expected on something marketed towards newborns through toddlers..  Pastel animals dozed with nightcaps on their heads around the front waist, and little stencils of peaceful clouds, moons, and stars dotted themselves all along the groin and buttocks area.

“Unreal,” Matthew whispered.  “Super unreal.” 

The sun wasn’t close to setting, yet.  Still a long time before bed.  Some form of morbid curiosity took hold of Matthew, nonetheless.  He swept the other diapers and bits of paper detritus aside to the foot of his still barren mattress.  Every article of clothing went to a puddle on the floor.

Slowly, clumsily, he spread out the diaper and climbed onto the creaking mattress and lowered himself onto it.  Grumbling, he sat up and pulled the front up between his legs while lying back down.  Carefully, he planted his feet and wriggled his hips to adjust it while he taped the sides up.  First the left two, then the right.

Matthew stood up and looked himself over.  The diaper sagged a bit and so he had to carefully tighten and readjust the tapes, making sure to be careful not to wear out the adhesive strips.

Experimentally, he took a few steps around the bedroom. The crinkle was distracting and the added mass between his legs changed his gait to a slight waddle. A few steps in he pushed his legs together more and let the padding bunch up a little between his legs.  The diaper held sturdy, and he found he could more or less walk normally.

That crinkle though…

He decided to ignore it.  If Matthew could ignore not-so-classic rock, he could make himself ignore the slight rustle of soft plastic whenever he moved.

Matthew sat down at the computer desk and shot an email off to his real boss. “I think I’ve got something,” he typed in. “A prototype of their new diaper.”

The response was almost immediate. Mrs. Northeaster or Candice must be sitting right by their computers.  “Evidence?”

Hastily, Mattie took a picture of himself from the belly button down.  “A factory error made them too big, but I think you’ll get what they’re going for.”  He attached the picture and sent the message.

“This is good,” they replied.  “You’re getting close. Keep up the good work.”

Mattie was so excited by the compliment that he barely noticed that he peed a little bit into the fresh padding.

[Personalias]

Chapter 4

WHAM’s one good non-Christmas song was being piped into the massive corporate office of PharmaCorp when Mattie began his rounds.  Appropriate, because Matthew was full on jitterbugging and wide awake.

“Morning Karen!  Morning Meredith!” Mattie performed his usual mail sorting routine with an added amount of pep in his step. “Morning Joe!”  Heh.  Morning Joe.  That meant coffee!  Mattie couldn’t help but feel bright eyed and bushy tailed!  

The last several days he’d slept better than he’d ever remembered. His eyes would close, his breathing would slow, and the next thing he knew he’d wake up feeling refreshed. All it took was laying down and taping on a fresh diaper.  No more fear of sleeping in wet sheets, all cold and clammy.

Mattie felt so great about it, that it hadn’t even registered to him that waking up in a wet bed hadn’t been something he’d been afraid of until a very short while ago.  Nor did it occur to him that waking up with his thumb in his mouth was unusual.

The diapers were super comfortable, too.  Comfortable enough that as soon as he got home from work that he’d tape himself into a nighttime diaper, sit at his laptop and then do the real work of going through PharmaCorp’s files.  

Without the need for potty breaks, Mattie could spend a whole lot longer combing through code and communications from multiple departments for any sign of new plans, business deals, anything that might give a clue to their next move.  More than just advertising notes could be found once he figured out where to look.

For example, based on manufacturing orders placed to China, Mattie had figured out that PharmaCorp was getting more and more materials for plastic backed diapers, while scaling back it’s cloth-like components.  They’d scored a hit with old-school gendered diapers...maybe they were trying to bring plastic backed...back?  Cash in on nostalgia a second time?

Maybe.  More digging was needed.

Regardless, Mattie was certain that if it weren’t for his diapers and not having to go to the potty as often, he wouldn’t be able to be burning the candle at both ends like he was.  They were so comfy and made him feel safe.  His regular, boring, big kid underwear felt flimsy and useless.  So useless, in fact, that Mattie hadn’t bothered to wear them the last two days.  He was going easy breezy while at work and then would go home to pad up for the ultimate double shift.

TOILET!  Matthew didn’t have to go to the toilet as often!  Not the potty! Only babies used that word, and Mattie was a big ki-..grown-u…..adult.  Matthew was an adult.  And he wasn’t going easy breezy; he was going commando!  Yeah!  Commando!  

What had he been thinking?

“Mattie?”  A voice snapped him out of his confusion.  “Are you alright, dear?”

Mattie looked to his co-worker.  “Yeah, Doris.  Why?”

The older woman smiled softly at him.  “You’ve been standing there fidgeting like a three-year old who can’t decide whether he needs to go potty or not.”

Mattie felt a blush heat up the sides of his face.  “Sorry,” he said.  “Just...lost in thought, I guess.”

“Sure, sure,” Doris agreed.  “I get it.  It’s payday and you’re already figuring out how to spend your first check this weekend.  We’ve all been there.”

Mattie blinked. “Uh-huh.”  He started to push the mail cart away, embarrassed that he’d been unable to split his focus as well as he normally did.  Usually, he’d been able to push the cart down the various aisles and cubicle mazes, deliver mail, and keep an eye out for unattended machines to get access to all while talking to himself to build up his confidence and motivation.  It was easier than being able to walk and chew gu-

“Mattie…”

“Yeah, Doris?”

“You’re doing it again.”  

“Oh. Sorry.”

“And Mattie.”

“Yes?”

Doris tapped her pen on her desk.  “Are you sure you don’t have to go potty?”

Like a knee being hit with a hammer, Mattie bobbed his head.  “Yeah, Miss Doris.  I’m sure.”

“Okay, cutie, keep going.”

Mattie did, even as he blushed.  Miss Doris was a little old for him, almost Mrs. Northeaster’s age, but he liked being called cute.  His hand came off the cart and his thumb started to inch up towards his mouth. “The fu-?”

Matthew stopped himself and kept along his delivery route.  Maybe he hadn’t slept as well as he thought he had. It was more like an anesthetic sleep come to think of it.  A lack of consciousness as opposed to true rest.  That explained why he was having such trouble focusing.  It didn’t explain what he almost did with his thumb, though.

Mattie continued his rounds, focusing on just delivering the mail.  A few cubicles that he stopped by had perfectly vulnerable desktops that would have been cake to sync up with his computer back home, but he felt himself too rushed and weary to worry about that now.  He didn’t have to find a new system or email or whatever to hack in EVERY day, did he?

It might even be more to his advantage to lay low and slack off on the hacking a bit.  Maybe use the time to cut loose a bit and seem like an average employee.  Go out on the town. Today was pay day after all.

“How’s it going Mattie,” one of the big wigs in advertising waved to him.  “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”  Mattie gave a polite chuckle, but nothing more.  That must have been the go-to joke around these parts.  “Keep up the good work, sport!”  The compliment gave him an extra little skip in his step.  It was nice when the big people noticed him and told him he was doing a good job.

Things were going smoothly enough;  first mail drop of the day almost completed.  Then Rod Stewart’s ‘Forever Young’ kicked on.

In the middle of the floor, Mattie stopped and listened.  He sighed and smiled a bit.  He sucked on his thumb a little.  He started peeing his pants.  “Mattie?” a far off voice called.  “Mattie are you okay?”

The warm spot started out small and quickly spread.  The hissing sound of liquid hitting fabric was so faint that it was like a potato chip crunching and only his ears could hear it.  It certainly didn’t block out Forever Young, and it blended in nicely with the rhythm of his sucking thumb.  

“Mattie…”

His eyelids felt extremely heavy as the warmth and wetness quickly spread. The front of his khakis stained a darker shade as the urine made a trail, part of it branching out and seeping down the inner sides of his pant legs, as even more of the stuff simply dripped out onto the floor directly beneath him; the first drops of what would be a very big puddle.

“MATTIE!”

Mattie jerked awake, his eyes finally taking in what they saw; his mind appreciating that he was well and truly pissing himself!  He yanked his thumb out of his mouth and gasped as the urine left a obvious trail on its way down to his socks and loafers.  “What the-?”  Instantly he had the urge to stick his thumb back in!

Being able to see what he was doing to himself neither halted nor slowed the act.  It only made him very very aware as the cuffs of his pants finished dripping and forming the putrid puddle beneath him.  His knees locked, his shoulders shook.  His heart felt like he was beating out of his chest.

This hadn’t happened to him in...ever?  Not since at least kindergarten.  “Wh-wh-why?” he gasped.

“Saw that coming…”

It was Miss Doris’s voice, and it was far off. She was on the other side of the floor, her head popped out above a maze of cubicles with dozens of others, but he heard her all the same.

That’s when Mattie realized that his not-so-little accident had been anything but private. Phones were ringing, and music was playing over the speakers; yet no one was answering.  No conversations could be heard.  No click clacking of people on their computers minding their own business.

No.

Mattie had wet his pants in front of everyone, and everyone, in turn, was looking at him. Staring. Judging.

Two sets of elevator doors dinged open and light bits of chatter were cut off by soft and baffled, “Oh!”s.

The would-be-hacker looked down at his sopping wet pants and the yellow puddle beneath them.  Already, the stain was cooling; his crotch freezing, as the overpowered air conditioning kicked in. His legs bowed out comically like they were trying to separate themselves from the rest of his body. His arms flapped uselessly like a chicken.  To top it all off the only explanation he could muster to sum up his confusion, befuddlement, and outright disgust with himself was a deep, throaty. “WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”   

 “We’ve got a ten-seventeen.” A security guard mumbled into the walkie talkie pinned to his shirt.  “I repeat, we’ve got ten-seventeen.”  The guard stepped in front of Matty and addressed the gathered gawkers.  “We’ve got a ten-seventeen folks!  I ten-seventeen!  Little boy had an accident!  Go about your business!  Help is on is on the way!”

And just like that the rest of the hustle and bustle joined the Rod Stewart south track.  He’d gone from a freakshow and curiosity to...to...a little boy who wet his pants?

“What’s a ten-seventeen?”  He shouted over to the security guard several feet away.  “What’s going on?”

The security guard turned and looked at Mattie.  “It’s what I just said!  It’s big people talk for someone who just had an accident.”

Mattie felt like he’d gone through the entire employee manual and didn’t recall any procedure regarding urinary accidents..  Granted, he hadn’t looked too deeply into physical security protocol  “Big people…?  Why did you call me a little…”

The security guard stepped forward and put a hand on Mattie’s chest.  “Careful there, sport. Don’t want you making a bigger mess and tracking your puddle everywhere.” Mattie froze.  “Somebody’s coming to help you get, sorted out.  Okay?”

Mattie looked down at himself and imagined himself tromping around, with little wet footprints showing wherever he’d gone..  “Okay…”

Up from the stairwell, a door opened came a familiar face in a white coat appeared.  “Mattie?”

“Ginni?”  Mattie asked.  Her hair was tied back into a tight pony tail, but otherwise, the auburn haired young woman looked the same as Mattie remembered her.

The woman from the pharmacy started quickly walking towards him and the security guard.  “Ten-seventeen?” the guard asked.  

Ginni nodded and was allowed to advance.  “Mattie?” she asked.  “What’s wrong?  What happened?”

Pretty girl!  Mattie standing in one of the most embarrassing positions ever.  And there were only so many words that could be used to describe his current predicament   Mattie gulped. “I...hadda...accident…?”  He squeaked the words out and added a strange questioning inflection, like he wasn’t sure that his bladder had chosen to let loose.

“Are you wearing your big kid underwear?”  Such an embarrassing question, stated so simply.

“No…?”

“Okay,” Ginni said calmly and sweetly..  “Not a problem.”  She took Mattie’s hand and gave the top of it a gentle fact.  “We’ll get you sorted out, okay?”

Despite himself, Mattie felt his pulse slowing.  It felt good to know that someone, especially a pretty girl like Ginni, would help him out of this terrible situation.  “Okay.  Yeah.”

Ginni was already taking her coat off by the time that Mattie gave his consent.  “Hold still, buddy,” she instructed.  Carefully, she wrapped the arms of the coat around Mattie’s waist and tied it into a knot.  She threaded the back of the coat between his legs and tucked it into the tied knot.  Even Mattie knew what it looked like.

“This will take care of it in the short term,” she promised. “Can you step out of your shoes for me and go over the puddle like a big boy?”

Like a big boy…

The way it was phrased gave Mattie a sense of urgency to the task.  Peeling off the first urine soaked shoe, the hacker wide stepped out of the mess he’d made, and then peeled off the second.  

“Good boy,” Ginni whispered.  She gave his hand an extra little tug.  “Come on.  Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.” As if they had a mind of their own, his legs waddled along behind Ginni.  “That’s right.”

He let himself be led to the elevator.  Alone in the little metal box, Ginni took out a key card and swiped it on the panel.  The highlighted panel went from a dark red palette to a light blue.  Ginni pushed the button for the basement.

“Ginni?”  Mattie asked.

“Miss Ginni,” she corrected.

“Miss Ginni?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to get you some fresh clothes, silly.” Miss Ginni giggled as if the younger man had said something positively adorable.   

Mattie’s mind flashed to an image of him wearing a one size fits all jumpsuit, like what a stereotypical janitor might wear.  Or a prison inmate.  “All of my clothes are at home,” he shifted nervously.

Miss Giinny steadied him.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “You won’t need them anymore.”

“What?” Matthew cocked an eyebrow and pulled his thumb away from his mouth.  He hadn’t even realized that he was starting to suck on it.

Without missing a beat, Miss Ginni changed the subject.  “So did you mean to go pee pee in your pants or did you forget to go potty?”

A thin frown framed Mattie’s face.  “Um...I forgot.”

“Why weren’t you wearing your training pants?”

“Training pants?” Mattie blanched.  “What do you mean training pants.”

“Sorry,” Miss Ginni corrected herself.  “I meant your ‘big boy pants’.”

“I don’t wear big boy pants,” Mattie said.  What he’d meant to say was that he didn’t wear training pants.  It came out much worse than he’d intended.

The elevator dinged and the door behind them opened up.  Miss Ginni twirled and led Mattie into a.quiet white room filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes.  “You don’t wear big boy pants?” she asked.  Before he could clarify her eyes lit up.  “Oh riiiight!  You still wear diapers!”

“O-O-Only at night” Mattie tried to correct her. Through his stuttering he didn’t notice the padded floors beneath his bare feet, or question why he’d never seen this room in any of his research.  

“It’s okay to need diapers at your age,”  Miss Ginni promised.  “We just gotta take some precautions.”  

“Precautions?”

Miss Ginni took the makeshift bum wrap off of Mattie’s hips and patted the padded floor.  “Lay down for me.”

Without thinking, Mattie did.  “What’s going on?” He asked, afraid of his own body and what was going on.

“It’s okay,”  Miss Ginni promised him.  “You’re not in trouble.  You didn’t do anything wrong.”  She said all this while unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his pants for him. “No one thinks any less of you.”

Rationally, Mattie very much doubted that.  Yet his body put up no resistance as Miss Ginni hooked her fingers into the waistband of his pants.  “Butt up, please, sweetie.”  He lifted his hips so that she could more easily get the pants off him.  “Thank you, big boy.”

“You’re welcome.”  Mattie felt like his whole world was being lifted up with those four words so sweetly said.

The brunette leaned over and unbuttoned his shirt.  “Gotta get rid of this too.”  She was right of course.  That’s what Mattie got for tucking his shirt into his pants.  He sat up just enough for her to get the shirt off of him.  She didn’t even need to ask.  “Good boy!”

His arm started to creep back towards his mouth while Miss Ginni took his wet clothes, balled them up and tossed them into what he could only assume was a laundry chute. It felt good to suck on something and self-soothe in this terribly awkward predicament.  He didn’t have control over much right now, but Mattie felt he could control his thumb.  

It was a good thing he had his thumb too, because not much else could have soothed Mattie’s nerves, nor muffled the surprised yelp he let out when Miss Ginni came back with a new diaper.

“Those are only for bedtime!”  

A delicate, yet somehow surprisingly strong hand prevented Mattie from sitting straight up and bolting back for the elevator.  Mattie couldn’t tell if Miss Ginni was that much stronger than him, or whether his body just froze in place at her touch.  

Six of one?  Half a dozen of another?

“What you have at home are bedtime diapers,” Miss Ginni agreed.  “But that’s not what I’m holding.”  She showed him the padding in her hands.  It was nearly identical to the factory error brands he’d taken back to homebase with him in thickness and structure.  Only the decorations had changed.   If he allowed that to be put on him, bright happy sunshine faces wearing sunglasses and tweeting birds would be decorating his pelvic real estate in lieu of sleepy moons and cuddly critters with nightcaps on them.  The stencils for clouds and stars were there, but the colors were more warm and vibrant than the cool mellow tones taped around his groin at night.  “See?”

“How about I just go home and-?”

A single pink-nailed finger pressed up against his lips was enough to cut him off mid sentence.  Good thing too, because Mattie honestly didn’t know how that sentence was going to end.  “You’re not in trouble, sweetie,” Miss Ginni repeated.  “You just had an accident and we don’t have any big kid undies here.  We can’t let you wander around.  What would the other kids think?”

“Other…?”  Mattie suppressed a shiver.  Already, Miss Ginni had grabbed a pack of baby wipes and was cleansing him while clicking at her tongue.

“It’s okay to suck your thumb,” Miss Ginni suggested. So he did.  “Legs up.”  So he did.  His backside wasn’t as sensitive as his front so he didn’t shiver.  He also didn’t get his legs down in time to avoid the fresh adult diaper being slid underneath him.

“Can I still go pot…” He stopped himself.  “To the bathroom?”

Miss Ginni busied herself dusting him with sweet smelling powder.  He got a kind of a pleasant woozy feeling from it and relaxed more.  “Of course big boys can go potty,” she said.  “That’s why they get to wear big boy pants and grown-up underwear.”

Grown-up underwear, so flimsy and useless.  Where had that thought come from?   Miss Ginni folded and pulled the fresh diaper taut over his waist and started to apply and adjust the tapes.  Not left and right, but bottom and top.  

The way she gathered up the leg gathers and centered the landing panel; the way she was so fast with everything.  The way she tucked the front instead of pulled super hard on the back.  There was something odd about it, not in the methods she used, but the fact that she was using them to being with.  She seemed so...experienced.

“You didn’t answer my question,”  Mattie said as best he could without whining.

The auburn haired woman finished taping the diaper up and pressed firmly on the decorative landing panel.  “If you happen to make it to the potty,” Miss Ginni told him. “We’ll be really proud of you.  But if you need a change later, I’ll change you too.  No muss, no fuss.”

Standing over him, she reached down and offered her arms.  He took her hand and sat up.  Perhaps it was the setting, but this time he couldn’t just ignore the crinkle.  “Okay…”  He shouldn’t be agreeing with this, but everything that was being said felt so sensible, even if it didn’t sound so.

Including,  “Arms up.”  

Three seconds later a light blue t-shirt was pulled over Mattie’s head.  It stopped just past his belly button.  It didn’t even come close to covering the top of his diaper.  He looked like he should be in a diaper commercial.  “Pants?” he asked.

“I don’t think you’ll need those,” Miss Ginni said.  Mattie felt that there was an implied ‘any more’ in her tone.

The blood drained from Mattie’s face as he took himself in.  He looked like a giant hairy toddler. “So...what now?”

Miss Ginni’s giggle sounded a little less flirtatious and a little more sinister.  “You’re still a big boy, right?” she asked rhetorically.  “You’re all cleaned up.  Time to go back to work.”

Mattie gulped.  “Work?

[justforfun]

Interesting!  I like the story so far.

[D503]

Really enjoying this one ?‍?

[Crinkleybutt]

Can't wait to see where this one goes.

[abdlwpg]

Wish this would be updated?

[SoakedinTexas]

I wonder how work is going for him  ? 

[Personalias]

Chapter 5

“Here’s your mail,” Mattie said, handing the bundle of letters to a very important grown-up at a desk.  The grown-up didn’t didn’t look up; just handed Mattie a bit of outgoing mail.

“Here.”  

Mattie was grateful for that.  He didn’t like it when people looked at him like this.  He felt dreadfully embarrassed.  When a grown-up would look at him, they’d wince at first, and do a double take.  Then they’d smile pleasantly, hand him any outgoing mail and ask him if he’d been a good boy.

“Yes, ma’am,” or “Yes, sir,” he’d mumble over his pacifier.  It was the third to last bit that Miss Ginni had given to him before returning him to work.

Then they’d go,  “Are you sure?”  To which he’d reply in the affirmative.  Followed by, “Do you have to go potty?”

Then, almost like it was second nature, he’d look down between his legs, mildly examine the padding with his eyes..  “No...?”  He was telling the truth.  He didn’t have to go potty.  He would have felt something other than the pleasantly warm squish, or there would have been pee-pee dribbling down his legs like last time.

Then he’d get a “Good boy” and a light pat on his backside to send him along.  
Ten floors.  Ten whole floors of this, with over a fifty-fifty shot of getting hazed like this.  Hazing, that’s what this was, plain and simple.  Pick on the new kid for wetting his pants.  Just like in kindergar...highschool.  

Going to the elevator, Mattie looked back over his shoulder, swearing he could hear disapproving whispers from the grown-ups.  “Ten-seventeen.”  Big deal! He’d wet his pants! It happened...sometimes!

Everyone knew; everyone knew that he’d had an accident in his big boy pants, and he was wearing a plastic badge of shame around his bottom to prove it.

“Hold on,” a grown-up security guard stopped him before the elevator. The security guards were paying a lot of attention to him since he came back from Miss Ginni’s secret room. Maybe they were worried he’d have another accident and leak on the carpet, (though wouldn’t that be more of a custodial concern?)

 The grown-up reached to the front of the mail cart and took out a baby bottle; the second to last thing Miss Ginni had and filled it with water.  “Drink.”  Obediently, he did.  It was important to listen to both security AND grown-ups, and this one was both.

“Good boy,” the guard said as Mattie started drinking it up.  This hadn’t been the first grown-up that wanted to see him hydrate.

Grown-up?  Such a weird way to think of someone, Mattie mused when he was about half done.  But it felt right. It also felt wrong to think of himself as a grown-up.  An adult? Maybe…? But a grown-up? Not even close.  From the moment Miss Ginni had taped a fresh diaper onto him, it was like a kind of switch had been flipped in Mattie’s brain.  Everyone in the building was put into one of two categories: grown-up or not.

Everyone else he’d come across had been a grown-up.  He was not.  Logically, he knew he was “of age”.  It was just hard feeling like one walking around looking like a toddler.  The secondary signs of puberty, such as body hair only made things worse.  His bare uncovered legs and arms, prickled with hairs and such, felt wrong to him, and it was more than just the chill of the air conditioner.  The diaper felt...not right, but comfortable at least.

“Done,” Mattie said, handing the bottle over for inspection.  The guard quickly examined it and then put it back in Mattie’s mail cart.  

“Good boy,” off you go.  Like all the others he sent the mail boy on his way with a gentle pat on the backside.  “Ten-seventeen is in the elevator.”  Odd to say it, but Mattie was already getting used to it.

Mattie looked down at his diaper and wondered when all of those extra ba-bas would kick in. If he wasn’t careful, he might actually have two accidents in one day.  The physics of going to the potty like this were starting to worry him.  Not because he didn’t know how to use it, but because the mechanics of the situation were awkward at best.  Did he untape the diaper, plop it down on the ground and then go pee-pee?  Or did he hold the diaper in his left hand while he aimed with his right?  Would he put it back on himself like he did at home or did he have to call Miss Ginni to fix him up?  More importantly, what did he do with the mail cart?

That had been the last thing Miss Ginni had given him before sending him back to work: a harness that clipped to the cart and only Miss Ginni had the key.  It had almost a BDSM feel to it, except it was light blue; like something a mother might put on a young child who wasn’t into holding hands.  The way the harness wrapped around and in-between his legs only further reinforced his infantilized status.  

Oh yeah.  That meant he probably couldn’t take his diaper off to go potty.

DING!

The elevator lowered down to the mailroom.   Instantly his heart raced.  His friends in the mailroom were going to see him like this and as far as he knew. One last bit of salt to rub into his wound.  “Just play it cool,” Mattie told himself.  “Act like it’s a joke and-”

And in front of him was Miss Ginni, waiting for him as the elevator doors opened.  “Hi, Mattie!”  Rather than let Mattie step out, Miss Ginni stepped in. “Did you have a good day at work?”

“Good day at…?” Mattie was confused.  Miss Ginni took a moment and released him from his harness.  “It’s not quite lunchtime yet.”

The lady he’d met at the pharmacy tweaked his nose and pushed the doors closed.  “I know, you silly billy!  But you’re going to get the rest of the day off!”

Mattie’s immediate relief made way for suspicious concern.  “Why?”

“Because peeing your pants is stressful enough.” Miss Ginni said. “Corporate policy.”

“Corporate policy?”  Mattie echoed dumbly.  “They have a pants wetting policy?”

“Of course,” Miss Ginni said.  “You didn’t think I came up with putting you in a diaper on my own, did you?  That’s be crazy.” She giggled, and Mattie wanted to be reassured by that giggle, but something wasn’t taking in Mattie’s brain.

He motioned to the mail cart that he’d just been unshackled from.  “Was that part of the policy too?”

“Sure,” Miss Ginni replied easily.  She reached out and ruffled his hair, making him feel silly. “Couldn’t have you toddling around without this. You might just wander off and forget it.  Or go and hide to find someplace to poop.”

The first part made sense.  Searching his recent memory, he did recall abandoning his cart fairly regularly, if only for short intervals.  The second part though...“The bathroom isn’t exactly a place where I would go to hide,” Mattie defended himself.

“I know,” Miss Ginni said in reply as if the matter were considered settled.  The manner in which she said it was slightly unnerving if, all things considered. As if she were agreeing to a completely different statement than the one he had intended.

DING!

The elevator door opened again, and Miss Ginni led Mattie out into the parking garage.  Mattie looked back towards the emptied elevator and saw the abandoned mail cart.  “What about the-?”

“Just leave it,” Miss Ginni interrupted.  “Someone else from the mailroom will take care of it., baby boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Mattie clicked his mouth shut. Had he so readily agreed to being called a baby, or was that just for ditching the cart?  Maybe both?”. It felt right, but it felt wrong in how right it felt.  His bare feet slapping on the cold concrete of the parking garage jolted a tiny tad of sense into him. “Where are we going?”

Not slowing or breaking her stride, Miss Ginni led him by the hand to a black SUV. “I already told you, sweetie.  You’re going home.”

“This isn’t my car, though…”

She opened the door to the backseat.  “That’s fine.  I’ll give you a ride.”

“But you don’t know where I…”  His objection was cut off mid sentence when Miss Ginni groped him.  “Whoah! What are you…”

Miss Ginni tilted her head to the side as if it was curious that he was objecting.  “I’m only checking your diaper, Mattie.”  An extra squeeze hammered the feeling of warmth, wetness, and a kind of slick inner cushioning; not unlike the feeling of intercourse, or so Mattie imagined.  “Hmmm…you’re definitely wet, but I think we can wait till after lunch to get you changed.

Wet?  Hearing it outloud.  It was a different kind of wet than earlier that day however.  This wasn’t the cold and clammy dampness.  More like a warm personal spongebath.  Like having a wet pillow pushed up against his loins.  Maybe that’s why he hadn’t noticed before…?
Speaking of things now noticed, Mattie was just beginning to notice that the space inside his diaper was getting smaller by the second.  Blood rushed to his face (and more than just that).

If Miss Ginni minded or even noticed his growing protuberance, she made no comment, instead gently shoving him into the SUV and helping him buckle in.  Mattie found that he needed the help buckling up too.  The backseat didn’t have the usual crossways over the shoulder seatbelt, or even the old fashioned belt buckle.

“Left arm through,” she guided his arm through one strap.  “Now, right.” She repeated the action and buckled the two sides together in the center.  Mattie briefly thought - hoped?- she was going to squeeze him below the waist again, but instead she uprighted a proper buckle located between his legs and inserted two more metal tabs from either belt down in the center.  

Had this happened even twenty-four hours ago, Mattie would have felt restrained; trapped.  In the moment, he only felt secure in what was essentially a system that mimicked a toddler’s car seat. 

One thing did trouble him, however, if briefly.  “Wait…” Mattie stumbled.  “This...this isn’t my car.”

His good friend from work calmly climbed into the driver’s seat.  “It’s my car.  Can’t have you driving right now.  You might crash.”

“Why?”

Miss Ginni didn’t answer.  Nervously, he reached down and started to suck on his pacifier in order to self soothe.  His patience was rewarded with something besides garbage music.

“Five little ducks went swimming one day,
Down the River Far Away.
Mother duck said ‘Quack, quack, quack, quack’
But only four little ducks came back”

So much better than Cher and middling Billy Joel songs.

Five Little Ducks.  The Ants Go Marching One By One.  The Teddy Bear Picnic.  The hits just kept on coming. Despite himself, Mattie did not bother to sing along even though he was very much enjoying the music for once. It was as if two sides of his brain were struggling with each other and all he could do was suck on the rubber bulb.

“We’re heeeeere,” Miss Ginni sang out.  “Home sweet home.”

The old saying goes, ‘Expect the unexpected’.  True to the phrase, Mattie had braced to be taken to a strange out of the way house; possibly in the middle of the woods somewhere.  He was in an unfamiliar car, in unfamiliar clothes, with only a passingly familiar woman.  His shock was only compounded when the black SUV stopped in the driveway of a house being used as an Air BnB, not quite thirty minutes away from the corporate office if he took the freeway and lucked out on rush hours.

“Thish ish...I...I…” More and more today, Mattie was finding himself at a loss for words.  

This may have been a good thing, considering that the grown-up who’d driven him home didn’t seem to be in too much of a mood for stopping and listening.  “I bet you're a hungry boy,” she said.  “Let’s get you inside and into the kitchen for some num-nums.”

His bare feet hurt only for half a minute as he was rushed inside the semi-familiar house.  They were greeted by the cool tile and soft carpet that he’d tramped around in.  His feet’s relief was soon countered by the pain in his frontal lobe.  

The outside of the rental property looked the same as it always had..  The inside was another matter entirely.  Being an Air BnB, the house had been just a step above a regular hotel in terms of feeling homey.  The couches, furniture, and dishes were all well cared for and well loved, but the it still very much had the feeling of a model home with everything being in a very specific place and feel to it where while someone could live there; no one actually did.  The property owner didn’t want too many of their personal effects being ‘borrowed’.

Somehow, that had changed drastically. None of the furniture had been moved or distrubed, but the whole place had a very lived-in, almost familial feel thanks to the additions of several new pieces.  Outside of the bedroom where he took his meals and did his computer work (His computer work! He’d almost forgotten about that), Mattie hadn’t paid too much attention to the rest of the house.

The primary colored toy bins, filled sloppily with plastic blocks, dolls, balls, toy cars, train tracks, and the locks, was certainly a new addition.  As was the playmat in the middle of the floor.  Mattie felt he would have noticed the dangling mobile.  The same for the pile of stuffed animals lumped together in one corner.

The not-grown-up; he was sure he wasn’t a grown-up; craned his neck all the way to the kitchen.  “Who…?” Mattie tried to articulate, but the words wouldn’t make it out past the pacifier.

“Turning your head all the way and asking ‘who’?”  Miss Ginni giggled.  “I think some little boy thinks he’s an owl.”  She helped him into his high chair.  The firmness of the seat really emphasized the sodden squish of Mattie’s padding.  Combined with the audible click of a feeding tray, it snapped Mattie out of one confusion and into another.

“What’sh goin’ om?”  Matthew asked.  “How did all thish get into my houshe?”

Pretty as she pleased, Miss Ginni went over to a nearby cupboard as if she’d lived there for years.  “This isn’t your house,” she said. “This is just a rental until you move back into your regular house.  Babies can’t own houses.  Still, I bet all your baby stuff makes you feel more comfortable.”

Matthew was anything but comfortable.  “I’m not a baby!” The words tasted like ash in Matthew’s mouth. He started twitching slightly, feeling uncomfortable like he’d just told a lie.

Unflappable, Miss Ginni took out a mason jar of green goop.  “Really?  Do big boys go pee pee in their pants at work?”  

Mattie leaned back in his highchair. “No…”

She opened a drawer, and took out a plastic spoon.  “Do they suck on pacifiers when they get nervous or bored?”

“No…”  Mattie pulled the pacifier out of his mouth.  He’d forgotten he’d left it in there.  As if to save his own argument, he unclipped it from his t-shirt and made to throw it.  A stern warning look from Miss Ginni had him put it politely on his tray.

She popped open the jar. Mattie could swear that he saw something burbling in the mush.  It smelled like pea soup and had the consistency of applesauce despite having a skin on the top like pudding.  “You didn’t seem to mind walking around barefoot in just a wet diaper, either.  You only just noticed when a grown-up told you.”  A seductive smirk.  “Didn’t complain about either.  You haven’t even asked me to change you.”

“You said you would change me, though…” Mattie was feeling like he had less ground to stand on with every passing syllable.    

Miss Ginni stirred the spoon in the green mush.  “That didn’t sound very grown-up, what you just said, did it?”

“No…”

She spooned up a ‘healthy’ serving and offered it up to him.  Unresisting, Mattie leaned forward and accepted it.  It tasted...it tasted...it tasted.  That was all that Mattie could say about it.  The stuff wasn’t nearly as putrid as it looked; just surprisingly bland.  “Do grown-ups or big boys get spoon fed their num nums in highchairs?”

Mattie waited to swallow.  “No…”

Another spoonful came.  “What about babies?  Do they do that?”

“Yesh”  This time Mattie hadn’t waited and bits of green spittle spilled over onto his formerly clean shirt.  Should’ve gotten a bib.

Miss Ginni.  “So, scientifically speaking, do you really think you fit any of the major criteria for being a grown-up?”

Scientifically?  Mattie looked down at his arms. Beneath the feeding tray, he felt caterpillar like legs rub together.  It wasn’t one yet, but he could still feel the stubble regrowing when he stroked his chin.  He hadn’t done a very good job of shaving.    “I’m kinda hairy.  That’s grown-up.”

The grown-up waited for Mattie to have a mouth full of baby glop before replying.  “I’m not hairy, but I’m a grown-up.”  

This time, Mattie remembered to swallow again.  “Yeah, but you’re a girl.  Girls aren’t that hairy.”  Looking over her again, and admiring the smoothness of her skin and the natural curves of her form wasn’t making his diaper any less cramped.  That was fairly grown-up too, Mattie felt.

“I think we can both agree, that everything I’ve listed is a matter of behavior moreso than secondary sex characteristics,” the definite grown-up replied.  “My hair or lack thereof isn’t what defines my maturity.”  She gave him another mouthful of green mush.  “Still,” she said, plucking a hair from his arm.  “Less hair would make you easier to keep clean, ya little booger.”

“Cwea-?”  Mattie had to literally slap his mouth to prevent a stream of mashed pea sauce from completely spraying out.

Miss Ginni was quick with a baby wipe to get Mattie’s mouth clean.  “Careful.  You’re supposed to eat your food, not wear it!”  She squinted at his t-shirt even more closely.  “Oh well, you don’t need to wear a shirt for your nap.”

“I don’t take-!” He was cut off by yet another spoonful.  The jar was close to half empty by now.

Miss Ginni wasn’t hearing it.  “You’ve had a busy morning, baby boy.” She lectured.  The spoonfuls were coming faster now.  

Spoon.  Swallow. Breath.  Spoon. Swallow. Breathe.

“If you’re gonna grow up to be big and strong and have energy to play the rest of today, that means you’re going to have to eat all of your num-nums and take your nap.”

“I don’t wannaaaaa….” he whined without even thinking about what he was refusing.  Play? Naps?  Growing up?  Mattie wasn’t sure.

“It’s going to happen,” Ginni didn’t let up on the spoon feeding.  The jar was getting emptier and emptier.  “This food has a high rate of satiety.”  Mattie didn’t bother trying to echo it, even in question.  His mouth was too full, and he was having a hard time thinking.  “It means it makes you feel full.  It’s a grown-up word.”

Mattie had to take her (very grown-up) word for it.

“You’ve almost got a nice full tummy.  Then we’ll go up to your room and get you in a nice dry diaper.  Put you in your nice comfy crib and play some nice comfy music.  You’ll drift right off to sleep, little guy.”

Mattie’s lids were already starting to droop.  Yeah..yeah...that did sound nice.  That sounded really nice.  His breathing was starting to become heavy.  It might have been just green glop, practically tasteless, but Mattie was starting to feel as if he’d just gorged at a Thanksgiving Buffet.  He was just on the furge of feeling overfull and was becoming sluggish.

Miss Ginni must have read something in his body language.  She put down the jar of food off to the side, and unclicked the feeding tray.  “Let’s get to work on that.”

The big baby let out a wide yawn.  “Okay…”  He stepped out of the tray and practically wilted so that she was boosting him arm and arm all the way to his bedroom.

The bedroom had changed the most from the way he remembered it.  The living room and kitchen had only added things.  Elements had been replaced here.  The bed that he’d been crashing on the last while was completely replaced with a giant crib.  Or maybe it wasn’t giant, an errant thought rammed its way into his skull.  Maybe it was just big enough for a baby like him….

The work desk where he’d toiled at his personal laptop had been gone, and now a proper changing table stood there.  Blearily, Mattie slid onto the padded surface.  A more rational part of his brain told him that this might have been a massage table once upon a time.  That made more sense than a giant even if it was decorated as such.  

“Where’s my...my…”  He was having more and more trouble finding words.  “Computer thingy…”

The nice pretty grown up pulled a safety strap across his chest and clicked a railing into place so he couldn’t roll off.  “What computer thingy?” she asked.  “Do you mean your tablet?  The one you play your little games on?”

Tablet?  No.  He shook his head.  His laptop was top of the line. More than something for a toddler to play Fruit Ninja with.  Still, he went,  “Yeah.”

“You can play your silly baby games after your nap.” Miss Ginn promised.

Feeling suddenly spent (what was in that food?) Mattie just laid back and was done talking.  He listened though.  He listened to the four tapes be undone, almost screeching one at a time as they were quickly peeled off the landing zone.  He heard the quiet humming of the woman as she opened the sopping wet front.  The tiniest little shake went through him when he felt fresh air on his privates.

He felt something else too.  “Someone’s enjoying this,” Miss Ginni teased, taking a wipe to his genitals.  He didn’t have to ask how she knew.  “Definitely going to have to do something about this hair later on,” she said more to herself than to him.  “But that can be after your nap.”

HIs lips moved silently, repeating the phrase as she wiped and cleaned him with delicate care, no longer in a rush.  Her gentle, tuneless humming was its own special kind of music. She lifted his legs and gently cleaned his rump.

“Butt up,” she said.

Not even realizing he was doing it, Mattie lifted his hips and he heard the soft hiss of plastic rubbing against plastic while she slipped the diaper out.  He heard the last gasps of rustling when she balled the used wipes up inside the diaper and the gentle click of a closing lid once she’d tucked it away inside the pail.

More cirinkling, crisper.  Fresher.  A new diaper was being unfolded.  “One more time for me, babe.”  His body did as it was told so that his new caregiver could slide the fresh padding beneath him.  “Good boy.”

Sweet smelling powder wafted up to his nostrils from down south.  “This baby powder will keep you from chafing and help you feel good,” she promised.  Mattie heard the moan come out of his lips when she started to rub the powder in.

“Hmmm…” she seemed to think for a minute.  “Needs a little something else just in case.”  Miss Ginni reached over, spread baby oil on her hands, and then started rubbing Mattie in a way that felt, really, really good.

“Let’s count down to ten.  Ten….nine….eight….seven…”

Mattie’s breath caught up to him when he realized what was about to happen. “Wait...don’t…!”  He didn’t even make it to “four.”  Good thing she had plenty of baby wipes.

“It’s okay, honey,” Miss Ginni promised.  “I won’t tell anyone.  That is more proof that you’re not really a big boy.” After a few breaths and a few more ice cold wipes.  She took his deflated member and pointed it down.  “Can’t have it pointed up during naps.  You might leak.”

The poor boy did all he could to soothe himself by nursing his own thumb.  His favorite pacifier was still on the highchair tray.  He shouldn’t have tried to be naughty and threatened to toss it.  When Miss Ginni had him spread his legs and started to raise the diaper back up, Mattie found the strength to lift his head and watch her finish tucking in the front sides and taping him up from the back.

This one had different decorations on the front.  Surfing teddy bears.  Cool.  It was kind of neat having different decorations every change.  Almost made it less embarrassing to need the diapers. Almost.

She gave his front another pat.  “All done,” Miss Ginni said.  She lowered the railing and unfastened him.  “Arms up so I can wash your t-shirt.”  Mattie complied, now being left in nothing but his new diaper.

“Let’s get you in bed.”  Mattie shuffled and climbed into the crib. The mattress had so much give, it practically enveloped him like a hammock.  Miss Ginni raised the railing of the side and locked it into place.

“Night night, Mattie, '' Miss Ginni said.  “Mommy will see you when you wake up.”  She turned off the lights and closed the door. “I love you.”

The baby mouthed “I love you too,” but nothing came out.  Above him, a mobile hung just out of reach.  When the lights went out, the mobile started spinning.  Mattie stared up at the toy rocket ships and rattles.  Idly listening to the gently tinkling music drifting out of the device, Mattie closed his eyes, feeling as if they might never open again, and would that really be such a bad thing?

The last thing Miss Ginni had said finally registered to him.  “Mommy?”  But by then, he was three quarters asleep, despite the sunlight shining through the window.
 

[abdlwpg]

Great update. Kinda wish he stayed at work longer and had to face his mailroom pals. 

[Personalias]

Chapter 6

“How does that feel?” Mommy asked Mattie.

Bad.  It felt really bad.  Mattie was shivering, achey, itchy, and very, very embarrassed. None of it good.  He was shivering because he’d just gotten out of the tub.  After nap time, Mommy had plopped him in and given him a bath.  

Not just a bath, though.  Not just any bath.

First she’d taken out a pair of electric clippers and shaved Mattie down, everywhere. She put a plastic sheet on the changing table and another layer on the floor.  For about forty five minutes, the changing table turned into an operating one. 

 His armpits, face,  chest, arms,  legs.  Everywhere.  Foolishly he thought his diaper area would be spared.  It wasn’t; just saved for last. He held his breath and sucked his thumb, it was the only thing he could do to keep still while she carefully and precisely trimmed the hair around his testicals.

It didn’t end there, either. “Whyyyyy!?” Mattie belted out when Mommy bent him over the changing table and spread his cheeks  “Whyyyy Mommy?!”

“This will be easy if you just hold still,” she promised him.  He felt a thick kind of paste be spread between his cheeks.  “And we’re only going to have to do this once.  So it’ll all be over soon, baby.”  

Staring out the window of his nursery, bent over, Mattie could have sworn he’d felt her smile.  It wasn’t a nice smile.

Mattie didn’t get the chance to ask why he’d only have to do this once.  He didn’t have the chance to ask why it was being done the first time.  That’s where the special cream came in.

He’d been taken to the bathroom, naked and almost hairless below his eyebrows.  Mommy put on some rubber gloves and then dipped her fingers into a large jar of cream. She quickly started rubbing it on him, starting from his ankles and working her way up his legs.

“Why is it tingling?” Mattie had said by the time she started working on his gentles and backside.  

“Hush,” Mommy said. “The tingling just means it’s working.”

It was doing more than tingling. Tingling was a light tickling, seltzer and foam. “OW OW OW! IT ITCHES!”  He’d thought it was his imagination when he felt it on his back parts.  It was annoying, like someone didn’t wipe him good enough. As the cream was spread over him, it was getting downright annoying! 

“Hush,”  Miss Ginni said, not breaking her stride.  Matthew fidgeted.  He’d jerked his hands away as she slapped them, not allowing him to so much as scratch or rub a spot hard.

“NO SERIOUSLY!” Matthew  repeated, “IT’S ANNOYING!”

“No it isn’t.  You’re just being a baby is all.”  Ginni barely seemed concerned.  She seemed more annoyed at what Matthew was saying than his obvious discomfort.  

Matthew stepped away, afraid to move out of the bathroom, but beginning to recoil from the woman’s touch.  “SERIOUSLY! STOP!”  He started eyeing the shower and the towels, his mind devising how to get this awful stuff off him.

“Get back here,” Ginni demanded.  “Now.”

“NO!”

The sudden slap across Matthew’s face left him thunderstruck.  The entire right side of his head throbbed and stung from the impact as much as the residue from Ginni’s glove.  “JESUS!”  That earned him a matching slap.
His fists clenched, and his nose wrinkled while his teeth bared. Matthew was nowhere near a fighter or a professional athlete, but he still had a good fifty pounds and reach over Ginni.  With testosterone, adrenaline and anger it wouldn’t be much to overpower the young woman.  Not enough to cause lasting harm, but easily enough to get away and leave her bruised. 

As soon as he made the face, that primal face of anger left over from whatever fork in evolution where man and chimpanzees parted ways, he found a gloved finger wagging in his face.  “NO!” Miss Ginni scolded him.  “Nuh-uh!  You do NOT tell your Mommy no!  Bad baby!”

His skin still tingling like in the world’s worst dandruff shampoo commercial, Mattie felt the fight go out of him.  From an outside point of view, it might have looked like a Doberman being cowed by a Jack Russel Terrier.  Neither dog realized the odds and the one that was barking the loudest and willing to nip first was the one winning.

“Y-y-y-...” Mattie strained.  “Yes Mommy.”  He stepped back to his place on the bath mat and let her finish spreading the cream all over him.  Arms.  Chest.  Shoulders.  His cheeks.  Everywhere he’d been shaved, more or less.  

The itching feeling on his skin didn’t subside but he learned to ignore it.  It was a little bit like eating hot wings.  After a certain point, the irritating feeling just stayed but it couldn’t get worse and there was nothing left to do but power through it.

So Mattie stayed very, very, still.  He still didn’t understand why this was necessary.  “Why...?”

Mommy didn’t answer. “Okay, into the tub,” she directed.  Hands still gloved, she helped him step into the bathtub and turned on the overhead nozzle and began hosing him down.

The removal of the cream was quicker than the application. She hummed tunelessly as she wiped him down into every nook and cranny with a warm washcloth and let the showerhead take care of the rest.  “You’re being very good, now.”  She promised him.

Mattie didn’t feel very good.  He felt...raw.  Very raw; almost like itch as a sunburn has just started to heal,  To add to his embarrassment, he was fairly certain he’d started peeing in the middle of everything.  It was difficult to tell whether that was liquid coming out of his penis or whether the dripping stream of water was just rolling out of him.  His senses were too overwhelmed to feel the inner release of an emptying bladder.

That’s why he needed his diapers...just in case.

In the present, Mattie found himself toweled off and looking at himself in a full length mirror.  He looked like a toddler.  Other than the fuzz on his eyebrows and the hair on top of his head, Mattie was completely hairless.  And some tiny adult part of his brain screamed at Matthew that he’d never have any other hair ever again.  Part of him had inferred the truth even if the rest of him ignored it.

“Don’t you look cute,” Mommy cooed at him.  It made him feel better.  “Let’s get you ready for some special playtime,” she said.  “Mommy’s been prepping it all during your nap.”  She patted the changing table.  Automatically, like it was second nature, Mattie hopped back up. “I think you’ll really, really like it.

Mattie pushed down with his feet and lifted his hips so that Mommy could slip a new diaper underneath him.  Finally. He let out a sigh. Something back to normal.  

Intellectually, he realized that nothing about this was normal.  He’d just started wearing diapers again a few days ago.  Today he’d  just wet his pants in public and was humiliatingly paraded around in nothing but a diaper...which he’d also since wet and had changed...

Rationally, all of that was true, but the rational voice in his head was just a quiet whisper compared to the mountain of irrational relief he felt as a new diaper was slid in place and he relaxed down onto it.

“Legs up,” Mommy commanded.  “I’ve got something special for you.”

Mattie looked up from the changing table and saw Mommy reaching for baby powder.  “Okay.”  Playfully he lifted his legs up and grabbed his ankles.

“Perfect!” 

Perfect was not the word Mattie would have used as he felt her spread his cheeks yet again, this time pressing something up against his whole.  

“EEEEP!”  Matthew slammed his feet down and started to sit up.  “What are you-?”

“Babies don’t talk when their Mommies are changing their diapers,” Miss Ginni said.

“What were you trying to stick up there?” Matthew demanded to know.

The woman who had been an unknown until a few days ago put her hand on his hairless chest.  She looked him in the eye and in a calm authoritative voice said,  “I’ve got some medicine for you.”  She waved a not-so-little pill in front of him. “It’ll help.  Now, lay down, lift your legs, and think of Mommy.”

Mattie did.  He even crossed his ankles so he could hold them both back with one hand.  The other hand he sucked on while Mommy did the rest of the work.  As she inserted the suppository into him, he sucked as hard as he could on his thumb and tried not to cry.  Thankfully, the baby powder did come next and he was allowed to lower his hips back down.

By the time the fresh clean diaper was taped around his hips, first the bottom row of tapes, then the top, Mattie couldn’t feel what had been jammed up his rectum anymore.  “I need you to hold that medicine in for as long as you can,” Mommy said solemnly.  “Can you do that for me?”

No!  No he couldn’t!  Red flag!  Red flag!  He should start pushing now as hard as he can.  Get that horrible thing out of his guts before it had a chance to dissolve!

But Mommy knew best.  It was as simple as Up and down were opposites or the color of the sky.  And Miss Ginni was Mommy.  So instead he meekly nodded.  “Yes, Mommy…”

She pinched his cheek and gave him a peck.  “Good baby.”  He sat up just long enough to get a sky blue onesie with happy clouds yanked over his head and then laid back down so she could do up the snaps between his thighs.  “Such a good baby.”

Being led by the hand, Mattie waddled out into the living room. There a big bouncer was dangling from the ceiling, low to the ground and right in front of the T.V.  A gesture from Mommy was all it took for him to step into it, holding very still as she hosted it up on a pulley to fully support his weight and keep him dangling with the balls of his feet just barely on the floor. 

 “Drink this.  I don’t want you getting dehydrated.”  She handed him a rather large baby bottle of orange juice.  The big baby snatched it up in both hands and put the nipple to his lips.

Mattie glugged the bottle down as fast as he could.  He wasn’t particularly thirsty, but his body was acting like it was.  Matthew winced as he drained the last of it.  What was that strange aftertaste?  It wasn’t as bad as if he’d just brushed his teeth, but there was something...off.  Like, maybe this wasn’t real orange juice but some kind of off-brand Tang; orange tasting powder and chemicals dissolved in water or something.  

Knowing that it came from PharmaCorp, Matthew rationalized, it made sense.  Matthew winced. Thinking about PharmaCorp was starting to give him a headache for some reason.  So was thinking of himself as ‘Matthew’.

Mommy took the empty bottle away, and gave him a pacifier.  Like a machine, he started sucking on the dummy, starting in a slow, nervous rhythm.  This was a different pacifier, than the one he’d been given before.  

“You’re about to have a lot of fun, Mattie,” Mommy said.  She pivoted around the bouncer and started fiddling with the pacifier’s sides.  Instead of just a clip or a dainty ribbon, this pacifier had two thick and sturdy straps that Mommy was in the process of buckling tightly behind his head.  “Now you can giggle and coo and the paci won’t fall out.”  The sound of a padlock being closed preempted Mattie  reaching back and undoing it.

A pair of headphones came next.  “It’s okay for babies to watch silly cartoons, but I don’t want you to interrupt me reading my novels.  

“Hmmmph?”  Mattie tried to talk but the bulb for this pacifier was too big, too firm, and too jammed in.  He was pretty much gagged. All he could do was suck.

A warning look froze his hands in place from taking them off his ears.

“I thought you could watch some cartoons,” Mommy told him.  “And commercials.  She picked up a remote and pressed a button.”Enjoy!”

BWOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!  The pulse of sound and the flash of bright light assaulted Mattie’s senses and attention.  His head stared directly ahead at the television in front of the bouncer.  His body became incredibly heavy and still, bobbing only lightly in the bouncer.

He could feel with complete detail his body sinking deeper into a kind of trance, with the cords holding the bouncer aloft supporting more and more of his weight.  His legs lifted up, dangling him  just an inch or two from the carpet floor.

“YOU ARE WATCHING PCTV.” A voice from inside the headphones prompted.  “ENJOY BABY. THIS IS JUST FOR YOU.”

The world outside the screen started to fade away from Mattie’s consciousness and lively upbeat orchestra music played and the screen came to life.  A blue cat and a brown mouse’s faces lit his eyes up.

A cartoon!  Mattie loved cartoons! He hadn’t watched them in years but he loved them!  Mattie frowned and sucked on the paci gag a little harder.  If he loved them, why had it been so long since…?

The orchestral theme segued into a fast swing edition of Rockabye Baby.

“Rock-a-bye baby, over the treeeeee top!” Some old timey singers crooned.  “When the wind blows, it blows and it blows and it blows and it….”

The scene transitioned to a girl dragging the cartoon cat by the tail. “You are a bad bad bad naughty little baby…” Mattie gasped and sucked harder.  Was the cat wearing a diaper?  Mattie’s eyes widened and his head wobbled a bit trying to focus.  

Something was strange.  The style and the coloration seemed like something from long ago, but the diaper on the cartoon feline was definitely a modern disposable.  He could see the tapes instead of the tried and true cartoon safety pins.  That made it realer to him.

Here this clearly adult cat was:  Annoyed, dressed up like a baby, bonnets, booties, and all, and being tormented by someone that even as a cat, he could likely overpower but didn’t.  Mattie related way too much to the cat just then.

And so it continued for the next six minutes.  Damn.  That little mouse was a dick.  He kept wordlessly mocking the cat, even though the cat was just drinking his bottle and trying to make the best of a bad situation.  What did the cat do to deserve this mockery?  What did he do to have the other cats come in and humiliate him?  

He felt a trickle enter the front of his pants a little over halfway through the cartoon.  It wasn’t nearly as wet as landing in a fishbowl butt first, but Mattie felt he could relate to the adult kitten’s less than pleasant diaper change by three mean spirited alley cats that had wandered into his nursery.  It was almost like they were the baby cat’s co-workers.

“Byyyyye byyyyye, rockabye baby bye byeeeee!”  BAM! Ending credits.

“For both you and your little one, sleep is important,” a soft feminine voice whispered into the earphones. 

Great.  A commercial.  Mattie didn’t roll his eyes as was his initial instinct.  He just focused and listened, realizing how oddly familiar it was.

 “Neither of you want to wake up because of a wet diaper.  And leaks are the worst.  That’s why we’re introducing Sleeperz nighttime diapers.”

Mattie lit up and he began sucking on his pacifier even harder.  Those were HIS diapers!  HIS diapers were in a commercial!

“Sleeperz has a more absorbent core that wicks away moisture from your baby’s skin, and combines it with strategically placed cooling gel so that even the warmth of wetness won’t be felt.  Your baby won’t even feel their nighttime accidents and remain blissfully asleep, ready to play in the morning.”

For only a moment, Matthew frowned.  They hadn’t been his diapers. Hadn’t he seen this commercial before.  A slight gas pain in his gut stole his attention before

“Buy Sleeperz.  Because a good night’s sleep is priceless.”

Another cartoon came on after the commercial.  This one seemed to be in the same old timey style as the last one, but with different subjects.It was about a pig and a duck trying to do the stork’s job and setting up a baby factory.  Babies would go down a conveyor belt and be powdered, diapered, bottle fed, burped, and then sent off to a new home via a rocket.  Once again, despite the technicolor filter of it all, the diapers in particular seemed fairly modern. 

 Soon enough though it became evident that the factory foremen weren’t very good at their jobs and by the end, they’d fallen on the conveyor and were diapered up and sent to new homes as a Momma Duck and Pig took care of them and took them out for one last walk in the park. They didn’t look too happy about it, but they were stuck in the strollers.  That’s just happens when you’re not good at your job, Mattie supposed.

 Matthew blinked in confusion while the screen blacked to commercial.  He could have sworn he’d seen this one before. The ending seemed...different though.  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  Maybe the diapers had safety pins in his memory?

Mattie looked down at his stomach and felt increased pressure.  He wanted to fart a moment to relieve the pressure, but then remembered what Mommy had told him.  He had to hold it in for as long as he could.

“Sometimes babies, especially little boys just aren’t ready for potty training”  Mattie’s eyes darted back to the screen. An attractive African American woman held a pack of diapers. “They’re just so busy learning everything else about the world, that listening to their body and learning to go to the bathroom is just low on their list of needs.”  She talked like a spokeswoman, but the way her top was cut, showing off that cleavage...it gave Mattie some very...interesting thoughts.  “Psychologists and pediatricians agree, forcing potty training when they’re not ready is just setting them up to fail.”

The screen switched to stacks of diapers put side by side, confirming that yes, the diapers on the far left were in fact, bigger diapers than their predecessors.  “That’s why we introduce our newest diaper, now in size 7!  Size 7.  Wait until they’re ready.”

Another diaper commercial.  Strange that there was no baby in it. He wasn’t moving, but Mattie still heard a strange crinkle coming from the front of his diaper.  Matthew tried shaking the cobwebs out of his head…

Yet another cartoon flashed. This one was full of gross out humor and crude animation that made Mattie cringe, but he couldn’t help but relate. In the show, the two characters,  were acting like a couple of con artists, pretending to be babies in order to have a life of ease.  He giggled, despite himself when the fat dumb one pooped himself and was rewarded with a change and lots and lots of attention from the mother figure. 

What was that feeling Mattie was experiencing?  Jealousy?

“MOM ALWAYS LIKED YOU BEST!”  Okay...that was funny.

Something felt off about the end, however.  The two scammers were exposed as pretending to be real babies, but then it ended with Mom and Dad saying “It’s okay.  We like these ones.  It’ll be nice to have babies who don’t grow up.  Less of a disappointment.”  Where was the joke?

And did those two really want to have to live this way the rest of their lives?  Earlier they were literally being told to walk across hot coals and tortured by pretending to be this family’s babies.  The Dad’s stubble was like painful sandpaper.  Why would anybody want this?  More importantly, why hadn’t Matthew’s erection gone down? 

He had a breather and a chance to wonder no longer than a few seconds before the next cartoon or commercial came on.

And it went on and on like that.  Cartoon; commercial; cartoon; commercial.  Every cartoon was about an otherwise adult character ending up being treated like a baby.  Sometimes by accident, sometimes by design.  And the endings never seemed quite right.  Cartoons tended to be an episodic format, but nothing seemed resolved by the end.  Each time the main character was going to be treated like a baby for the rest of their life.

The End.

Sometimes they were happy about that, as was the case with rabbit.  Most of the time it was less than thrilling for them, but it was clear that the end joke was “Ha-ha! You were a grown-up and now you’re a baby!”

And for some reason Mattie felt incredibly relieved about that.  Like he wasn’t alone.

The commercials never had any pictures of children, but a series of attractive looking men and women promoting diapers either by talking directly to the camera or voice over. Not exactly variety, but it got the message across.

Something about that was okay.  It wasn’t variety that Matthew’s brain was looking for. And he was having a disturbing inkling of what it was looking for: Something very, very, unbabyish.  He didn’t move while watching the television, but he was able to relax his bladder.  The feeling of a thoroughly soaked padding eased the pressure off his throbbing member.  Wet padding was much better than dry padding in this case.

Wet padding was much better than dry padding in any case.

Where had that thought come from?

It was during the last cartoon, one featuring a goose, that things finally reached a terrible climax.

The goose had just dived into the mechanical baby carriage at the museum of modern inventions.  Jokingly, he cooed and sucked his thumb (at least Matthew assumed that was cooing...the honking was so hard to understand) while a gentle feminine voice sang to him.

Mattie still felt like he couldn’t move, his entire upper body just caked in lethargy and weighted down by invisible hands holding him in the comfy bouncer.  But something in his brain let him wiggle his hips a bit.  He was just barely able to plant his feet and give just the slightest thrust.

Thrust wasn’t even a good word for it.  It was more like a subtle grind in his harness.  The discreet and slight friction became more than enough for his frontside to find enjoyment.  Meanwhile his backside became aware of lessened pressure on it and thus the everbuilding pressure inside Mattie became more and more urgent.  It was nice. 

Very nice.

For two very different reasons.

But as all things in these cartoons tended to do, they went overboard and things spiraled out of control..  Bottles were squirted in the main character’s face.  Rattles and baby toys conked the poor fowl on the head.  “Ah-ah-ah” The carriage said, pinning him inside. “Baby fall!”  All while the Mommy-bot cooed to him.  “More milk?”

“NO!” he screamed only to have milk spray in his face like a firehose.

Like any good bit of comedy, one motion led to another, and the bird ended up splayed on his backside. Two robotic arms grabbed and yanked yellow legs up by the ankles.  Matthew knew very well what was going to happen.  He’d seen it over a dozen times already.  

“Now, now, Mama will fix.  He’s Mama little Lamb he is!”  The goose struggled and screamed, even as the disposable diaper was snapped open and slipped under him.  “No no! Hold still!”  Baby powder was showered down on his feathered backside, frontside, and between his legs while he impotently screamed in garbled protest.  

Teeth gritted on the nub of his paci-gag, Mattie was already well on his way to humping the air.  Something else was already well on the way.  Almost there.  Almost there. Almost! THERE!

Crinkles from the television joined crinkles from the inside of his onesie as the robot brought up the disposable diaper and taped it on while the cartoon goose broke out into pathetic, babyish cries.   “There, there.”

There!  There!

Mattie broke into a hot sweat, screaming into his paci gag as, unable to stop himself as his bowels and balls let loose simultaneously. His guts pushed out a wet hot mess into the back of his diaper, while his penis spasmed out of control.  Humiliation and relief! Humiliation and relief!
 His hips kept working, gyrating even more as his bottom squished in the expanding mess. This was awful...this was great.  He shouldn’t be doing this.  He shouldn’t be enjoying this.  Why was he like this.  How would he get out of this?

“Momma kiss and make it better.”

As his screams of embarrassment and moans of contentment died back down, the screen switched off.  A single, almost chaste kiss to the top of his head suddenly reminded Mattie that he hadn’t been alone.  He’d never been alone.

Mommy!  She’d been sitting behind him, on the couch the whole time.  She’d watched as he’d rubbed himself against his diaper, likely heard him moan and scream and laugh, as he was transfixed by the cartoon.  Smelled the fecal matter leaving him and knowing all to well what he was going through.  

She knew.  She knew it all.

Mommy stepped in front of the screen.  “Uh oh.  Looks like someone liked their cartoons so much, they made a mess and didn’t even say anything!” she teased.  “That’s okay.  That’s what diapers are for.  So you can watch cartoons a looooong time.”

Finally feeling like he could move, Mattie turned his head and looked out the window.  The sun was already setting!  

How long had he been watching?  There couldn’t have been more than a dozen cartoons, most less than six minutes.  How long?!  

“MMMMMMMPH!” He tried to ask.  He found himself short of breath as he tried to sit up, feeling just as messy and squishy his pants really were.  He’d done that to himself.  All of it.

“You’ve been watching them all afternoon and it’s almost dinner time,” Mommy explained.  “Silly baby.  Do you want change?”

“MMMM-MMMM!” Mattie nodded his head.  Thank goodness he could do that much.

Cartoonishly, Mommy looked down at her wrist.  “Oh wow! Look at the time!  Only an hour until dinner!  I gotta get cooking! Sorry Mattie, Mommy will change you later.  After dinner.  If you’re good.  How about you just watch some more cartoons until dinner?”

Matthew reached out his arms and tried to gather his bare feet under him so that he could stand up.  “MMMMMMPH!”  That muffled yell could have meant “Mommy!”  or “No!” or even “Bitch!”  

But when the screen flickered back on and Mommy stepped away, Mattie’s body became heavy again and he sat back down, left to stew in his messy baby pants, while unblinking eyes took in every detail of the cartoons and commercials that followed.

[TerranV]

Nice classic cartoon references.

[Personalias]

Chapter 7:

Mattie went to work the next day, just not in the same way he expected.  His mommy woke him up and changed him out of his night time diaper and into a dry daytime one.  She slipped a onesie on over him and buttoned it between his legs, and put on some socks and tennis shoes.  She fed him breakfast in his highchair, and just like that she led him back to her S.U.V., buckled him into the car seat, and drove off to greet the morning.

The boy didn’t even realize that they weren’t on the way to PharmaCorp’s headquarters until the car stopped in front of a windowless, single story building far far away.  Mattie  could tell it was far away, because when he was let out of the car he was able to see the city skyline and pinpoint the building.

“I thought we were going to work…?” Mattie said.

Mommy put a finger to his lips.  “Not all work is done at corporate, silly billy,” she cooed at him.  “Now come on.”

A sudden gust of wind reminded him that he was outside and Mattie remembered to be slightly embarrassed. Numbly, he wobbled into the new building.

Another woman, a black lady with gorgeous curly hair and crimson lipstick smiled.  “Hello,” she said in a sing-song way.  “Good morning.”  She stood behind a counter and waved to them.  The floor was shiny white and her voice echoed a little bit with how empty things were.  A couch here, some potted plants there, but otherwise the place seemed pretty, dead.

Mattie looked down at his reflection...and saw Matthew in a onesie with a big puffy diaper underneath staring back at him. Mattie gulped and put his pacifier back into his mouth.

“Is this him?” the lady said, but not to Mattie. 

“Yup,” Mommy replied.  “Who else would it be?”

The two ladies chuckled.  “At this point in the operation, you’ve got a point.  If things go well, though...”

“If things go well…””

Mattie looked at the women, dumbly. “If things...go…?”  

“Hiiii,” the new pretty lady gave Mattie a hug.  He returned it and forgot what he was about to ask.  “You must be Mattie!”

Hearing someone else, someone besides Mommy,  say his name out loud like that was somehow a bit jarring.  “Mathew...actually….”

“It’s nice to meet you Mattie,” the lady bowled over him.  “I’m Miss Charlandra.  Are you ready to get your picture taken?” 

“Picture...taken…?”  Mattie blinked, trying to piece things together.  “I already got my picture taken.  For my photo I.D…” he looked around at himself and only just then realized that his Employee I.D. was missing.  Reflexively, he patted himself down looking for pockets that just weren’t there.

Something else was wrong, too.  But Mattie couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  His employee I.D. was missing.  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Matthew wasn’t terribly bothered by losing it; mostly because he hadn’t intended to need it for very long.  Why was that, though.  This job with PharmaCorp was just meant to be temporary, wasn’t it?  It was like he was walking down the pathways of his mind and between today and a few days ago, somebody had put up a big mesh baby gate that he couldn't get past.  

He went straight up to it and put his face against the white mesh he could juuuust make out something in the past, but it was still hazy at best; the kind of thing where he’d have to know what he was already looking at to get noticed.  

“Right this way, and we can get started,” Miss Charlandra said.  She made a little waving gesture and started walking to a back door. Mommy grabbed Mattie by the hand and together they followed her.

As opposed to when he came home early yesterday, Mattie wasn’t surprised with what he saw when he crossed the threshold.  It was a photo studio.  Several white screens were hung up and draped onto the floor to create the illusion of a single blank plane; softboxes Mattie thought they were called.  Along the periphery of each softbox were several lighting umbrellas and a high end camera pointed front and center.  PharmaCorp had a similar setup at their headquarters albeit in a much smaller room.

 Along the sides of the studio were props and racks of costumes. Civil War era uniforms hung next to cowboy outfits, military fatigues, and flapper dresses.  Rifles were propped up right beside giant lollipops, dancing canes, tennis rackets, and umbrellas.  This was a professional photo studio, alright.  

Based on what research he’d done of PharmaCorp’s corporate structure and holdings, this was likely a branch of a modeling company that PharmaCorp either owned outright or partnered with so exclusively that they might as well. 

Research…?  The concept felt funny between the baby boy’s ears.  What research?  Why would he need to have done resear-?

“Okay,” Miss Charlandra said, motioning over to a blanket.  “You can take his clothes off over there.”

Matthew felt his cheeks flush.  “What?” he yelped.  His legs were already taking him to where Mommy was leading him.  “What am I going to be putting on?”

“Nothing,” Miss Ginni told him.  He was able to stop for exactly one half step before a light swat to his behind kept him in sync with his mommy.  “Don’t worry, silly, you’ll still have your diaper on.  No one is gonna see your naked butt.”  That little reassurance made Mattie feel far better than it should have.  Something about hearing that he was staying protected in his diaper triggered massive dopamine release.

 His legs bent and his body gently laid itself down on the blanket, legs spreading so she could get to the snaps in his crotch more easily.  The ex-hacker didn’t even think of it.  His body just kind of took over.  It was doing more and more of that lately.  It gave Matthew more time to think but...

Ex-hacker? 

Pop-Pop-Pop went the buttons of his onesie.  He planted the flats of his feet and pushed up his hips so that Mommy could lean forward and shimmy the onesie up over his diaper and past his belly button.  It was a queer sensation; one that he was simultaneously used to and second nature and unfamiliar at the same time.  Mommy reached forward and grabbed his penis, squeezing it through the thick padding encasing him.  “Still dry,” she commented.  She gave a gentler second squeeze and squinted briefly in thought.  “Maybe a liiiiitle wet,” she amended. “Hard to tell, but it won’t show up in camera.”

She must have been.louder than Mattie thought.  “Don’t worry about discoloration,” Miss Charlandra called over.  She was setting up and tinkering with one of the cameras.  “We can digitally color correct a lot in post.”

Mommy looked back after her shoulder.  “I hear they like big wet diapers, anyways!” She took a moment and wriggled off his shoes and socks for him.  

“True.  But if he poops or is a really heavy wetter, you’ll have to change them.” Miss Charlanda called back.

Like a good boy, Mattie sat up and let his mommy take the onesie the rest of the way off.  The world went blind to him for a moment as the shirt was yanked back over his head.  “Why? You can’t digitally smooth out the bulges and wrinkles or something?”

“I can,” the photographer answered.  “But there’s only so much I can do if they start sagging down his thighs or falling off his hips.”  She started trotting over to the blanket where Mattie was being undressed.

“Fair.”  Mommy reached forward and tweaked Mattie on the nose.  “Don’t want a stinky baby anyways.” 

The photographer laughed, “Not in my studio!” 

Mattie tingled inside and he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad tingle.  They were talking about his bathroom habits right in front of him like he didn’t care.  Like they didn’t care.  Like it was all business.

All business?  Wasn’t there business that he was supposed to have been attending to?  Something about dia-?

“Up, up!”  Mattie’s hands were grabbed by the two ladies.  They tugged at his wrists and he stood the rest of the way over.  “Good baby!”

They didn’t release his hands. They walked him all the way over to the first softbox.   The ground there was surprisingly soft.  There must have been an extra matt on the floor or something.   “Down we go.”  Like a trained dog, Mattie sat, crinkling all the way down.  Between the comfy padding on the floor and the comfy padding on his bum he barely felt anything.  

Miss Charlandra started scooting and turning him around.  “Let’s move here...okay. Good.”  She poked his chest.  “He’s a little pale, but we can fix that in post.”

“Yeah,” Mommy agreed.  “Pretty sure he didn’t get out much before.”

The photographer’s hand went up and down Mattie’s chest. “Wow, Ginni,” she said.  “This is a really close shave.  You did good work.”

“Thanks,” Mommy smiled. “I try.”

“Whatever you used on James Bond here, do you have any left over for my legs.”

“My name’s not…”  Mattie started, but the grown-up lady stood up and walked back over to the camera.  

Mommy rolled her eyes.  “Miss Charlandra knows, baby.  She was just making a grown-up joke.”

Mattie sat there, contemplating what she meant by ‘grown-up joke’. A quick flash made his own thoughts stutter a bit.   “Perfect first shot,” the photographer said.  “Good baby!”  That made Mattie smile in surprise.  Another quick flash.  “And there’s a second.”

The boy took a look down at himself.  A perfect picture on the first and second tries?  Wow!  He had just been sitting there.  His legs naturally splayed wide so that his diaper was on full display.  “Oh Mattie!”  Mattie whipped his head up toward the camera and was blinded yet again by a rapid series of flashes.  “Good job!”

Good job!  Job...wasn’t he supposed to be doing a job right now?  Two jobs actually.  The regular one and the secret one.  Just like James Bond…

“He’s super cute!” Miss Charlandra said to Mommy.  “Do you think he’s going to be an only child, or do you think he has a little brother or sister on the way?”  That made the baby boy frown and not out of jealousy.  The way this lady talked just then...it was the way that adults...that people talked to each other when they knew someone else was listening and didn’t want them to understand.  Like a code. Like ten-seventeen.

“I think he’s the only one they’ve sent so far,” Mommy answered.  “And even if more come, he’s going to be MY only child.  Even with the massive pay raise, it’s still not enough to take care of two crinklebutts.”

The camera flashed and caught plenty of shots of Mattie looking back and forth to the two grown-ups like a spectator watching a tennis match.  “How’d you wind up with him anyways?”

Mommy shrugged non-chalantly.  “Right place.  Right time.  Computerized image search when I handed him the first trigger object.  Turns out I didn’t get as many pics from college off the internet as I thought I did.”

“Got paid on the pole?”

“Kind of.  Not exactly, but kind of.  Being a Mommy is an adjustment, but it’s not a huge step from what I used to do.”

“Do what you gotta do to make that money, honey.”

“Don’t we all?”

Money.  Yes.  Mattie...Matthew was going to make a lot of money.

“Mattie, baby!” The photographer grabbed his attention. “Do you think you could roll over and stand up for me?  Slowly?”  She traced a circle in the air as if he didn’t fully understand the concept of rolling over.

Carefully, the baby rolled over and shifted his weight over onto all fours.  From the back layer, more flashes lit up.  “Huh?” Still on all fours, Mattie looked back over his shoulder.  Another barrage of flashes lit his face up.

“Got it!”

“Oh wow,” Mommy said.  “Got his diaper butt and his face all in the same shot!  You’re really good!”

Mattie kept trying to stagger up to his feet.  The soft giving mat hidden by the softbox cover made it much trickier to stand.  It was like the crash pad in a gymnastics setting. He tried to stand up and felt the floor wobbling slightly beneath him, causing his profile to splay out; standing spread eagle.  More flashes against the wall warned Mattie not to turn around if he didn’t want his face to be photographed.

“Thanks,” Miss Charlandra talked while she snapped more pictures of the baby’s backside. “I’ve had plenty of practice working with the real babies.”

Real babies?  

Rather than turn around, Mattie accidentally fell forward.  It was only because of the extreme give of the mat that he caught himself, and feet flat footed, he ended up stopping himself from falling and staring straight at the camera through his legs.  
  
More bulb flashes lit up his face.  “Perfect!  Good baby!”

Good baby...but not real baby?  Something felt very very wrong about that.  Like maybe he shouldn’t be a baby at all.  He was a baby.  Wasn’t he?

“So are your pharmacy days over?” the photographer asked Mommy.

“Yeah,” Mommy said. “For now.”  She sounded kind of sad. “But after a few things blow over, I’ll probably be able to pay for his own private nanny and go back to work in a year or two.”

“Until then, it’ll be like your back in college.”

Mommy curled her lip.  “God I hope not.  Those guys were toxic.” She looked over at  Mattie who was just now getting his footing and able to water around.  “Yeah, I have to wipe his butt, but at least he doesn’t expect me to have sex with him.”

Sex?! 

Mattie lost his balance and fell back on his but.  More flashes and photos as he sat there bewildered...wetting himself.

He had been planning to have sex.  After this job.  Lots of money.  And sex.  With a pretty girl that he’d had a crush on for the longest time.  Since he’d...since he’d been…

“Seems like he’s still getting a pretty good deal.”

...in diapers?

What was sex?

“Let’s do some action poses.”  The two ladies yanked Matthew to his feet and helped him off of the squishy mat.   “I think that’ll add nicely to the portfolio we’re building.”

“I…” Matthew started to mumble.  “I’m not supposed…to.” 

The girl from the pharmacy stepped up to him and slipped two fingers into the front of his diaper.  “A little wet, but you were way wetter yesterday before you needed changies.”

“Still looks good to the camera,” Charlandra confirmed and added a thumbs up.

Mommy handed him a push toy from among the props.  It had two big yellow wheels on either side of a plastic snow globe like dome.Only instead of water and fake snow, it was filled with tiny plastic balls.  Connected to the base of the toy was a long plastic handle that branched into a T-Grip.

Mattie knew how this was supposed to work.  He’d push the toy around and the turning wheels would make a flap on the bottom inside of the dome pop up and down and send the balls crashing around.  And for some reason, it was called a ‘lawnmower toy’.

He wasn’t supposed to be doing this.  He wasn’t supposed to be playing with stupid baby toys or watching cartoons. 

“No.” Matthew said.  His head suddenly felt very clear. 

“Come on,” Charlandra coaxed, still busying herself with another camera.  “It’ll be fun!  All the other babies your age will think you look sooooo cute!  All their Mommies and Daddies will, too!”

“Mattie…” The girl from the pharmacy threatened.

“No.” Matthew said firmly. “I’m not doing this.”  He turned to leave.  What was he supposed to be doing?  Whatever it was, part of him was screaming that it wasn’t here.  Not here.  Not like this.  Work!  That’s right! He had to get back to work!

The would-be spy dropped the stupid push toy and started waddling towards the door. This time, he made it four steps before he was stopped.  Ginni ran in front of him like a blur.  “Mathew Walter McKinley!  Do you need to go over my knee?” 
Mattie froze.  Three names?  She said all three of his names!  Red Alert! Red Alert! Code red!   “I’m sorry, Mommy!  I’ll be good! I’ll be good!”

“You better, little mister. Get your butt over there so the nice lady can keep taking your picture!”

“Yes ma’am!”

The baby boy waddled to the dropped lawn mower toy and picked it up.  He started pushing it, back and forth across the designated softbox, ignoring the camera clicks and flashes.  “Remember to smile, Mattie!”

Mattie remembered to smile.  He was too afraid of his mommy spanking him for being naughty to forget.  He stared down at the floor, looking just past the plastic dome of the push toy.  He imagined that the bits of white in the floor was grass and that each pass was him cutting another row of it.  

Mowing the lawn. 

Just mowing the lawn.

Mowing the lawn like a big boy...naked except for a diaper.

Yeah.  That made sense.  Sure.

The last bit of Mattie’s doubt evaporated when he stopped mid push.  “Mattie?” Mommy asked softly. “Why’d you stop?”  He bent his knees, and did not break his unfocused gaze from the floor.  “Oh…I think I know what’s happening.”

Mattie stopped pushing with one set of muscles, and started pushing with another.  All the parts of him that were a “big boy” screamed in horror at the flashes while his diaper expanded and crinkled behind him.  He was pooping in front of this stranger, and that didn’t stop her from taking his picture.  Once more, he couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to.  

Did he want to?  For all the screaming and embarrassment inside him, there was another part just as prevalent and was nodding in affirmation. ‘Real’ or not, he was definitely a baby.  Stopping and going poo-poo or pee pee in their pants whenever they felt the need is exactly what babies did. That’s why he was wearing what he was wearing. 
Finishing his business, Mattie stood up. Mommy walked around pulled back his diaper to take a peak inside.  “Yup.” She said.  Let’s take five.”

“Cool cool,” Charlandra said.  “How about you change him into one of the nighttime diapers.  We could get him in some cute poses like with his head down but his butt up and his legs all bunched up.  Maybe see if he’ll suck his toes.”

“But I’m not sleeeeeepy,” baby Mattie whined.  

Another quick swat to his mushy behind silenced him.  “It’s just pretend, baby.  Your naptime isn’t till after lunch.”

“Okay…”

The fact that he wouldn’t have to take a nap till after lunch made Mattie feel a little better.  Still, he wished he could silence the whispers in his head that something was wrong...
 

[Personalias]

Chapter 8:

“Your little boy toy has royally fucked up.”  Mrs. Northeaster said to her daughter.  She took the glass of whiskey off its coaster and knocked it back before setting it down.  “I’m sure of it.”  It was her third glass and she was only just now starting to feel any kind of mellowing buzz.

Candice was pacing back and forth, threatening to wear a hole in the rug.  If she hadn’t kicked off her spike heels she very well could have.  “It doesn’t check out,” she said.  “It just doesn’t check out.  It was a good plan.”

“Not good enough.”  Mrs. Northeaster’s foul mood was corrupting and twisting any calming effect the whiskey might offer.  “He got caught,” she said.  “Or he got cold feet and ran.”

The younger of the two women growled a bit.  “It’s impossible. There’s no way he got caught.  We’d be catching all kinds of holy legal hell!  Wouldn't the police or something be raiding us?”

“There’s not enough proof to connect him to us.  Not right away.  I used enough proxies to get him the money and rent him that house that some serious digging would need to be done to connect us to him. Without us being directly implicated we can cover tracks and burn bridges.”  Then just to let her daughter remember who was in charge, she added  “My people know how to do their jobs.”

Candice stopped pacing and faced her mother.  “So do mine.”  She didn’t feel great about saying that with so little proof.  Then she remembered,  “Implication! If he was caught why hasn’t he confessed?”

“He’s a loyal lovesick little puppy,” Mrs. Northeaster said.  “That’s why you were honeypotting him, right?”

Candice considered it.  She thought of Mattie more like a little brother than anything, but she’d known what she was doing when she’d talked him into this.  She hoped that the amount of compensation he was getting would let him down easy.  He’d be getting what was promised, but not what she’d implied.  “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Why not get someone else?” Mrs. Northeaster asked. “Why him?”

The younger of the two women rolled her eyes.  “I already told you, Mother.  I’ve told you again and again and again.”  Candice hated it when her mom got like this.  “Mattie had...has…” she self-corrected, “the tricks and tools that we need.  He’s almost a complete unknown in the industry. And before this he was a total White Hat. That made him perfect.”

“Then why hasn’t he reported in? Not even once?  Why has he run away?”

“What makes you think he ran away?  Didn’t you just say that I honeypotted him?”

Mrs. Northeaster got up and refilled her glass.  “Not all men like honey, baby girl.”

Candice joined her mother and poured herself a drink.  “I don’t think that applies to Mattie,” she said.  “But good point.”  Hypothetically, Mattie was a shoe in.  Hypothetically, the job should have been over by now and they’d know what PharmaCorp was cooking up. Candice could argue hypotheticals all afternoon.  Hypotheticals paled in the face of results.  After far too much radio silence, Candice’s hypotheticals were  being overwhelmed by a complete lack of results.

“What do we do?” Candice asked.  “Start searching police databases for Mattie’s mugshot.” 

“Way ahead of you, dear.” Mrs. Northeaster replied dryly.  She went back to the big oak desk and sat down.  “That’s why I think he chickened out.”  This time she sipped at the whiskey instead of downing it.  “At least we didn’t pay him up front.  Now we’re only out of the cost for the AirBnB.”

“That’s it!” Candice snapped her fingers.  “That proves that he didn’t just skip out!  The AirBnB he rented out confirmed the keys being delivered and returned on time!  He did the assignment!”

“The keys were returned almost two weeks ago,” Mother Northeaster droned.  “Even if he wasn’t going to transmit any data electronically for security purposes, he’d still be back by now.”

Both women felt their hopes leap up when the door to Mrs. Northeaster’s office opened up.  Their expectations quickly lowered when they saw that it was Mrs. Northeaster’s personal assistant.  “What is it, Jonathan?”

The overweight, balding man that managed the schedule stopped as soon as he’d crossed the door’s threshold, eager to leave.  He was already starting to work up a layer of flop sweat.  “Ma’am…” he started, then recognized Candice was also in the room, “Ma’ams...You both might want to turn on the T.V. to channel twenty-seven.

He scampered out of the room as soon as he’d said it, as if he was afraid that one of them might lob something at his increasingly shiny head.  Candice was frustrated enough that she might have done it if presented with the correct opportunity.  Instead, she snatched up the remote and turned on the television.

 According to the infographic at the bottom of the screen, standing at a podium was Brittany Walsh, C.E.O. of PharmaCorp.  Not that either of the Northeasters needed to know that.  They knew who their competition was.  “ -Corp is responsible for a variety of different innovations in the pharmaceutical industry,” the speakers cut in.

“‘Innovations’,” Mrs. Northeaster spat.  “More like rip offs.”  Candice took a moment to shoot her mother a dirty look.  If PharmaCorp were doing some kind of press release, this meant that whatever they’d sent Mattie to peek in on was likely ready.

“From laundry detergents, dish soap, cold and flu relief, and infant care products, we are putting ourselves on the front line to meet consumer needs for over the counter hygiene and medical needs.”  The hint of a smile was starting to creep up on their chief competition’s face. “But with innovation also comes refinement.  Besides inventing new products, it is also our company’s philosophy to improve and revisit past offerings and perfect them so that the maximum amount of good can be done.”

A reporter, likely a plant, raised their hand and asked the most obvious question.  “So what blast from the past are you bringing out of the PharmaCorp vault this time?”

“Plastic backed diapers!”

Both women watching T.V. spit their drinks back into their glasses.  “That?  That’s their big deal?  Why?!”

It was almost like the rival C.E.O. had their office bugged- a terrible possibility that hadn’t occurred to either of them until just then.  “Based on industry surveys and research,” she said, “the majority of medical grade diapers are, in fact, backed with soft plastic.  They have better containment capabilities and odor control and structural integrity than their cloth backed counterparts.  It’s something of an open secret that factors like ‘breathability’ in disposable cloth backs were largely invented.  With current diaper technology there’s no practical difference in terms of wearer comfort and rash prevention. The move to cloth-like covering was motivated largely as a cost cutting maneuver.”

The hand of another paid shill shot up.  “Does that mean that these plastic backed diapers are going to be more expensive than other disposables?”

“Not at all.”

“How’s that?”

“Yeah,” Candice heard herself asking. “How’s that?”  These were all things that the Northeasters would have preferred to learn days if not weeks ago.

“Good question,” Walsh smiled.  “The answer to that lies with the fact that PharmaCorp provides so many services to other clients.  Little Caesars undercuts the costs of its pizzas by providing supply chain services to other restaurants.  McDonalds can sell its burgers cheaper because of land revenue.  In that spirit, we’re going to make our baby diapers cheaper by opening ourselves up to a brand new clientele.    We’re unveiling not just one, but two new lines of products!”  She turned her head and spoke to someone off camera.  “Go ahead. Roll the ad.”

The screen clicked off for a moment, and gentle music came wafting on as the clip played.  The dark blue of night time that could only be achieved in a studio, shone on a nursery. The camera closed in on a young woman, a new mother most likely, lovingly looking down into a crib.

“For both you and your little one, sleep is important,” an off screen narrator’s soft feminine voice whispered.  “Neither of you want to wake up because of a wet diaper.  And leaks are the worst.  That’s why we’re introducing Sleeperz nighttime diapers.”
From the bottom of the screen in cloud shaped bubbles, the letters S-L-E-E-P-E-R-Z drifted onto the screen.

“With a Z?” Mrs. Northeaster scoffed.  “A little nineties, isn’t it?”

Meanwhile, Candice leaned over to the keyboard and started doing a Google search.

The commercial shifted away from the live shot, showing a computer rendered version of the diaper.  “Sleeperz has a more absorbent core that wicks away moisture from your baby’s skin, and combines it with strategically placed cooling gel so that even the warmth of wetness won’t be felt.”  As expected, the animation whirled around with digital arrows pointing to the design features.

Candice looked at the search results and her face went rigid; her eyes didn’t dare leave the computer screen.  “Mother…?”

Mrs. Northeaster ignored her, focusing on the television. “Are those four tapes on the landing zone? Why?”

The commercial continued unabated. “Your big baby won’t even feel their nighttime accidents and remain blissfully asleep, ready to play in the morning.”  

The camera cut back to the faux nighttime scene, with the mother leaning down.  “Is that a drop down railing?” Mrs. Northeaster asked herself.  “I thought those were recalled.”

“Mother, you need to see this!”

The final shot of the adl ended with the young lady giving her infant son a kiss on his blissfully sleeping forehead. The one noticeable wrinkle was.  “IS THAT A MAN?!  IS THAT AN ADULT MAN?!  WHAT THE-?!”

 “Buy Sleeperz.  Because a good night’s sleep is priceless.”

Candice roughly yanked her mother by the arm and directed her gaze to the desktop.  “It’s not just any man,” Candice said.  “It’s Mattie.”

It must have been the booze hitting her all at once.  Mrs. Northeaster felt wobbly and sat down in her chair.  The website Candice had clicked on had Mattie’s picture on it. Correction: Pictures.  Plural. 

In them, Mattie laughed; Mattie smiled; Mattie sat; Mattie crawled; Mattie laid back and played with his toes; or peeked backwards through his legs. They were the kind of poses that infants and toddlers were posed in on boxes of diapers.  Which, in a way, was appropriate, since a diaper was the only thing he was wearing besides a confused or glazed over expression.  Super appropriate considering that one click on the website led the user to buying boxes and boxes of adult sized baby diapers.

“What is...A...B...D...L…?” Candice asked.

“That’s right,” the C.E.O. of PharmaCorp said back at the press conference. “We here at PharmaCorp are killing two birds with one stone.  We are making a premium adult diaper and selling it to the adult baby diaper love community to help undercut the cost of our infant and toddler lines.  PharmaCorp is proud to announce its Z-Stage line of products.  We’ll be meeting the needs of all babies, from A to Z.”

“Oh God…” Mrs. Northeaster whispered.  “Why didn’t we think of that?”

“What?” Candice balked.  “Mother!”

“Miss Walsh,” a media plant asked.  “Do you mean to say you’re promoting what some might call a sexual fetish?”

Miss Walsh nodded confidently.  “PharmaCorp has always had close ties with the incontinent community.  We’ve just also discovered that there are people who wear for recreational uses.  As to your asking whether or not this is sexual, that’s none of my business.” She paused for a beat.  “Though PharmaCorp also makes condoms and birth control.”

Laughter erupted from the television.

“Mother, look.” Candice hissed.  “There’s more: Sleeperz.  Surferz.  Balloonz. Starz.”

“And they have Mattie’s face on them.”

“All sales will continue to be primarily online,” Miss Walsh said to the reporters eating out of their hands.  “We’ll of course continue to sell our non-printed diapers as well, but for people interested in something closer to the nursery instead of the nursing home, know that they’ll be helping keep the cost down for real babies, too.  And to add to that feeling of authenticity, all of our Z-Stage products will have the same style print as our baby diapers, so that members of the ABDL community can have the full experience!”

“Miss Walsh,” A final pundit asked.  “Where did you get your model in that commercial?”

Mrs. Northeaster’s sworn enemy stared directly at the camera.  “You might say he fell right into our lap.”  Just before the pause became pregnant, she said.  “Let’s bring him out.  Come on Mattie!”

Happy music rumbled and canned applause and cooing awwws greeting as a skinny brunette woman pushed a stroller big enough to double as a wheelchair onto stage.  Sitting in the wheelchair, looking dazed, confused, and completely overwhelmed- just like any baby would in front of a crowd-was Mattie.

“What is our hacker doing diapered on stage at their press event?”

“Forget that!” Candice yelled.  “What is my childhood friend doing on their website?!”

Mrs. Northeaster felt numb all over.  “It’s just a still,” she said. “but it looks like he’s getting ready to poop. You looked like that when you were about one and a half years old…”  She was barely holding herself up. Now she felt drunk.  “You were so cute at that age.  Times were much simpler then…”

Before they knew it, the press event had ended.  Jonathan weaseled his way back in.  “Um...ma’ams?”

“What?”  Candice asked.

“Phone call on line one.  It’s the C.E.O. of PharmaCorp.”  He was out before anything could be chucked.  She reached over and pushed the speaker button instead.

“Hello?”  Mrs. Northeaster asked.

Miss Walsh’s voice rang out from the speaker.  “Did you see the press meeting?  How do you like our new adult spokes baby?” she asked.  “More importantly, how would you like to make a bet?”
 

[Personalias]

Chapter 9

A few days later in the top floor of PharmaCorp corporate headquarters, three very different women met, gathered around a large mesh pen, peering down at the nearly naked man inside.

The first, the maiden- or at least maiden like- was Candice Northeaster; heir apparent to Northeaster Care.  Still in the bloom of her youth she was dressed to lure the unsuspecting bees to her in negotiation with subtle hints of honey: The way her top showed a bit of cleavage and accentuated her heaving bosom.  The way that even with the ankle length skirt, she used a belt to cinch it to her hips and wore heels so that all the right parts could be seen in silhouette.  She was no crimson lady, no whore blatantly using her skin and seduction to get her way; but she was well aware of how other men, and some other women looked at her.  She was possessed of much, but her beauty was the weapon she wielded best.

Candice looked down at the man in the playpen and barely recognized him.  Not true.  She recognized her childhood friend very well, but with him devoid of body hair and wearing nothing but a disposable diaper with infantile prints she felt like she was looking at a past version of him; a living baby picture. 

Brittany Walsh, the second of the women, looked at the babied man and smiled smugly down on him. She was just over a decade older than Brittany but was already slipping comfortably into early middle age.  Her gray skirt suit gave the air of femininity, but the way it hid any remaining curves over her skinny figure, and dampened her smaller breasts took away the most direct forms of sex appeal.

She had a different power.  The power of her stance and her voice.  The power of her glare and authority.  Brittany Walsh was the matron and mother running her kitchen with absolute authority and men would beg her to shout them down and put them in their place, feeling fear and relief as she shooed them out while giving them something better to do that wouldn’t ruin dinner.

The third was Mrs. Northeaster.  Her daughter, now a grown woman, and her years of first being a suburban mother and then a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist taking a toll on her, she would not consider herself a ‘mother’ anymore. Her loose fitting pink pantsuit and flats were the most comfortable by far.  Nor did she bother herself with any bits of makeup.  She hadn’t need of it any longer.  She was the wise old crone, always thinking, always plotting, always scheming.

In a manner of speaking her scheming is what got them into this mess.  But ever wise, the Old Crone saw opportunity.  A chance for success.

Crawling beneath them, wearing nothing but a diaper on his bottom and a pacifier between his lips, Mattie looked up in confused awe and wonder at the three women deciding his fate.  He heard them talking, and understood the language they were speaking, but for some reason, the poor boy’s brain wasn’t translating everything.  He could listen and translate, but he had difficulty comprehending.  Almost like two parts of his mind weren’t fully connected, like his brain was a cell phone with a bad signal.

“What the fuck did you do to him?”  Candice spat.  She did not break her gaze, kept looking down at the transformed man in pity and horror. 

“Heather,” Miss Walsh said, “Please tell your daughter to watch her language.  It’s upsetting the baby.”

“He’s not a baby,” Candice snapped.  

“He’s an adult baby.”

“Yeah, a quick google search says that a diaper fetish is not...not...this.”

“How did you do it?” Mrs. Northeaster asked, dispassionately.  

“Suggestion,” Miss Walsh replied.  “Hypnotism.  Basic conditioning.  A few special food additives.  Subliminal messaging played in the office to make people more susceptible to it all given the right triggers.  You know.  The usual stuff.”

“Not that,” the crone said.  “How did you catch him?”

The matronly Miss Walsh stuck out her lip in disappointment.  “Oh. That. A twist on anti-hacking software,” she explained.  “Our most secretive assets have special viruses on them. As soon as he downloaded and watched the first commercial, we were in more control of his laptop than he was. That’s how we knew you were involved; he kept trying to send you updates.”  She turned her head and stared directly at Candice.  “Taking down a scammer center in India isn’t bad, but this is next level stuff.”

Mattie whimpered into his pacifier.  He didn’t quite know what was being said, but the baby felt like they were talking about him.

“It’s a shame,” Miss Walsh said.  “If he’d sent the data onto you first before looking at it, you might be wetting your Surferz right now.”

Mrs. Northeaster nodded at the boy.   “Such a shame.  Cute though.”  Candice bristled at that.

“Next time,” Miss Walsh said.  “Just contact and bribe our employees. Less risky.”

“So where do we go from here?” Mrs. Northeaster ignored the smug look on her chief competitor’s face.  “You were talking about a bet?”

“Yes.” Their rival said.  “An opportunity, too.”

“What kind of opportunity?” Candice asked, arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

“Patience, Candy,” the oldest of them said. 

“While turning your little spy into a big baby was a fun flex,” Miss Walsh ignored the brewing spat, “I’ve put myself in a bit of a corner.”

“You mean kidnapping?” Candice said.

The two older women laughed as though she were a precocious child who didn’t know what she was speaking of.  Having roughly the mind of a precocious child, Mattie giggled too but only because the grown-ups thought it was funny. Was Candy a grown-up?  She wasn’t laughing….

“Seriously though,” Miss Walsh continued.  “I’ve started an ad campaign to abdl’s, and I’ve got a good start for a male model, but I don’t have any ladies.”

Candice was having a hard time taking her eyes off her old friend. “So hire someone…”

“Or…” Miss Walsh said.  “I could outsource.”

“What’s the bet?”  Mrs. Northeaster growled.  “No more beating around the bush.”

“I’m curious to see how good Mattie’s programming is.  I need to see how he responds to certain...stimuli.”

“What kind of stimuli?”  Candice asked.

“How to put this tactfully?” Miss Northeaster said.  “If AB means Adult Baby, I want to see how much of his is Adult and how much is Baby?  How much does he now Love his Diapers?  Get it?”

Candice got it.  “You want to see if he can be turned on?”

“More than that, dear, but you get the gist of it.”

“Why?”

Mrs. Northeaster answered for her rival.  “She’s turned Mattie into the kind of freak she’s selling to. If that anti-hacking subliminal stuff worked on him, she could find ways to get them all hooked and dependent on her stuff.”

“You always were clever.”

“So…” Candy grimaced.  “First to make him cum wins?”

“Basically.”

“So what if we win?”  Mrs. Northeaster asked.

“I’ll stop selling my ABDL diapers and you can have your spy back.  We’ll say it was a prank.” Their rival said.  “It might take a few years of therapy and re-potty training to get him back to normal...or it might not. Not sure. Don’t care.”

“And if you win?”  Candice was having the hardest time taking her eyes off of Mattie.

“You’ll provide me with a woman model of my choice.  I’ll get two big babies provided by your company.”  There was a silence as neither Candice nor her mother spoke.  “Okay. Fine. I’ll cut you in for 10% of all ABDL diaper sales so that you get less by walking away.”

Mrs. Northeaster perked up. “Twenty.”

“Fifteen.”

“Done.”  The two business rivals shook hands.

“So how do we...you know?”  Candice asked. “What are the rules?”

“No sex,” the C.E.O. of PharmaCorp said. “Keep your panties on.  Everything else? I don’t care.”

“It’s simple, dear,” Mrs. Northeaster said to her daughter.  “Make him cum. Do to him what you were hinting at when we started this plan.”

Candice shuddered.  “Fine.  I’ll do it. For Mattie.”

“Do it for me,” Mrs. Northeaster said.

They waited for her to climb over the low mesh railing of the adult playpen

“Ready…”

“Set…”

“Go!”

*******************************************************************
Mattie giggled as Candy crawled up to him.  “Okay Mattie.  Let’s do this,” she said.  

She started taking her clothes off. Just like Mattie did before bath time! But Mommy helped him with his clothes.  Candy was doing it all by herself.  What a big girl!

She stripped all the way down to her diaper, or whatever it was grown-ups called them and climbed on top of him.  “Can you hear me in there, big guy?”  He wasn’t big! He was little and he knew it!

Candy pushed him down onto his back like she was going to change his diaper for him.  Maybe she was a Mommy.  Instead though, she started crawling all over him.   Candy in and started kissing him.  Not like Mommy kissed him, there was something very very different about it.  Something wetter.  Something sloppier.  Something harder about it.

She bent over and licked his tongue. 

Whoah!  Yuck!  What?!

“Do you like that?” She asked.  “Does it make you hard?”  She leaned back and grabbed the front of his sopping wet diaper.  “Huh?”

“Mommy?”  Mattie asked.  Was she a mommy like his mommy? Was she checking his diaper for him?  Did he need changies already?  All of these questions, and more, Mattie did not have the answer to.

“Ugh,” Candy said.  “No. I’m not your Mommy.”  She crawled off of him.  “Come on. Let’s get this gross thing off.  Think about me.  With you.  Remember? It’s me.  Candy.”  She started going for the tapes of his diaper, undoing them one at a time.  “We used to know each other.  We grew up together. We took baths together.   You want me.”
She opened up the front of Mattie’s diaper and looked down inside.

“Apparently not, young lady.”

Mattie looked up at the sound of the two grown-ups laughing.  “Grrr….” come on!  “She held his penis in his hands and started moving it up and down.  It was like wiping him but with no wipe.  It was rougher, too. “You want me!”

“Urrr!” Mattie whined. “Urrr! NOOOO!”  

“It’s not fair.”  Candy said.  

It was true, it wasn’t fair.  Candy played too rough.  And as much as he wanted to play with her, as much as he could somehow picture himself crawling over her and kissing her and licking her tongue, his body wouldn’t let him do it.  The rest of his mind seemed repulsed by the idea.  That’s not what friends did to each other.  It didn’t feel good.

“Ginni,” the lady that Candy had been talking to called.  “Would you mind coming in here? Bring a fresh diaper.”

Mommy came into the room with a diaper and some wipes.  She climbed over the playpen and knelt over him, giving Mattie a boop on the nose. “Boop!  How’s Mommy’s good boy doing?”  She cooed at him.  Mattie really really liked how Mommy talked to him.

Candy looked at Mattie’s penis.  “Hey!  Wait a minute!” She whined like a baby. “No fair!”

 “All’s fair in business,” Mommy’s boss said.  Candy’s mommy seemed to agree, though she didn’t seem as happy about it.

Mommy wiped Mattie with a nice clean wipe and then put a nice clean diaper back on him.  It made Mattie giggle and wriggle his hips at the fresh crinkling.  All the pleasure centers of his brain were being activated by the crisp fresh sound.  “Do you want some cuddles?” Mommy asked. 

“Yesh!” 

Mommy gave him a big hug and whispered special things into his ears.  Things that made his penis feel funny.  Funny but in a good way.

“This isn’t-!”

“You had your turn, Candice,” Candy’s Mommy said.  “Now it’s theirs.”

“Let’s let you nurse a bit.”  Mommy lifted up her shirt and stuck a nipple in Mattie’s mouth.  Her nipples looked a lot like Candy’s.  It was the one major thing why Mattie had mistakenly thought Candy was a mommy.

“She’s not lactating just yet,” Mommy’s boss said, “the hormones haven’t kicked all the way in.  But he likes it well enough.”

Mattie did, even if he couldn’t concentrate on what the lady was saying.  “Let me check your diaper. For something else,” Mommy said.

Candy covered her own nipples “That’s not fair!  I might have tried that. I was worried that he was so zonked out he’d bite me.”

“My baby boy won’t bite,” Mommy said.  “He knows better.” 

“Mattie don’t!”

Don’t what?  Mattie felt Mommy start gently rubbing the front of his diaper.  He hummed and gurgled a little bit.  It’s okay, sweetie, just let go.  You’re safe.  You can make stickies.”  It felt very nice hearing this.  Mattie felt a pressure building up, almost like when he was about to pee-pee, but not quite.

“Don’t you dare!”  Candy shouted.  “Mattie.  Don’t make stickies!  If you do, you’ll never get to be an adult again.”

Mommy kept rubbing.  Gently.  Gently.  He almost couldn’t feel her through the thick padding of his fresh diaper.  But he could hear the crinkle.  It was getting so hard to focus.  And something was tickling inside of him.  Something that desperately wanted out.

“He was never a big boy,” Mommy told Candy.  “Was hims?  No he wasn’t!  No he wasn’t!”  

“Don’t listen to her!”

Mattie knew better than that.  All the disobedience had been taken out of him very early on.  He wanted to be a good boy.  ““Do it for me.  Do it for Mommy.”  He wanted to do it.  He wanted to do it for Mommy.  He really did and could feel himself bursting to release.

Mattie couldn’t help himself.  Even as his brain yelled out in existential terror, not quite knowing that he’d betrayed and failed one of his oldest childhood friends, his member throbbed and convulsed, orgasming and spurting into his formerly clean diaper.

Mommy took him off her tit, laid him down and undid his diaper for him. “It’s getting absorbed, but it’s there.”  She gestured to the front inside.

 Tape him back up,” Mommy’s boss said.  “Let him sit in it awhile.”

Mommy did.  “Not a problem,” she said.  “He just got changed anyways.”

Candy looked very grumpy.  Maybe, Mattie thought, it was because she needed a diaper change too.  The thin pink diaper she was wearing didn’t look very comfortable or like it would hold very much pee pee or poo poo or whatever was in Mattie’s diaper now.  She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted.

“Well. Looks like I’ve got myself a new baby girl.” Mommy’s boss said.  “Welcome to the family, Candy.”

“What? No!”  Two big strong men came into the room and dragged Candy out of the playpen.  “Mom! You can’t let this happen.”

“She did say she could pick.”  Candy’s mommy said.

“And the girl’s a natural model.  Don’t think I don’t respect the work she did in diapers the first time.”

“Thank you.  I appreciate that.”  Candy’s Mommy walked up to her and gave her a kiss. “A deal’s a deal, Candy.  Make me proud.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”  She kicked and thrashed but the two men wouldn’t let her go.

“Don’t worry,” Mommy’s boss said. “We’ll find you a nice handsome daddy to take care of you. After some cartoons and songs and commercials, you’ll barely remember being a big girl.  Then you and Mattie can play together again.  Take some pictures.  Sell some diapers.”

“Sell a lot of diapers.”  Mrs. Northeaster sighed.  “Just like old times…”

The two older women shook hands. Candy cried.

And Mattie?  Mattie cuddled up to his Mommy.  For some reason he couldn’t quite articulate he felt like he had done something wrong.  He needed the comfort.  Also, for some reason he was feeling sleepy. 

“That’s right baby,” Mommy whispered to him.  “You did good.  Take a nap.”

So he did.

(The End)