Everything Zen (One Shot)

[TheUnknownAuthor]

Another random thing that popped into my head as one thing and turned into something else entirely. Enjoy?

 

Everything Zen

By: The Unknown Author

 

A boom of thunder shook the house, the windows rattling, the house shuddering as rain battered it from seemingly all sides. This was the first big storm of the season, and it was setting the expectation for future storms both in how loud it was and how hard the rain was coming down.

 

Within the house slept three people, Zen, Harry, and Penelope. The raging storm had done nothing to disturb the couple, Zen snoring peacefully beside her husband, her dark, ebony skin flawless as she slept naked atop the sheets in the heat of the night. Harry was also naked, but had lazily pulled the sheet over himself in his sleep, his strong arm draped across the small of his wife’s back, his beard dangerously close to tickling her nose as they lay facing one another.

 

Down the hall, behind the cream colored door with her name in colorful, crudely cut construction paper glued to a piece of white construction paper, a crayon drawn rainbow over the letters, slept Penelope. The room was lit fairly well by the plastic dome with stars and moons cut into it that let the light beneath the dome pass through to cast the shapes onto the ceiling and wall in a slowly rotating infinite cycle, the steady drone of the motor on the device serving as sufficient white noise to lull the room’s occupant to sleep without fail.

 

The walls were painted a light, almost pastel green, a neutral color for the then expecting couple to choose when setting up the nursery without spoiling the surprise of the sex of their baby. A mural of an enchanting forest straight out of a fairy tale adorned the wall, various happy animals meticulously drawn so they were overlooking the crib in the corner of the room by the then pregnant Zen as she sat on the floor in her overalls and drew and painted each of them in the hopes they would look after her baby in her stead while he or she slept. The practically full to bursting toybox beneath the window was also painted by Zen, she’d carefully recreated the look of an old steamer trunk but painted the box to look as though it had been brought out of a cartoon, the colors vibrant and the edges appearing soft and rounded. On the wall in front of the door was the changing table, in the center of the room was a brightly colored round rug that still held a few of Penelope’s toys from a day of play despite her having been told to pick them up before bed.

 

Another rumble of thunder killed the power in the house, the source of light from the slowly rotating dome disappearing, leaving the room in inky blackness, the only sound was the tinny music from the mobile above the crib that only came out a note every few seconds as the mobile strained to continue its job without a fresh winding. Lightning cast shadows in the room from outside, the bony fingers of tree branches, objects looking oddly sinister in the brief flashes of light.

 

Halfway between Zen and Harry’s room and Penelope’s was the bathroom. To Zen and Harry it was just a bathroom, a place to shower, shave, do your business, and nothing more, to Penelope however, it was the lair of the beast. Were she awake to see the room during the storm, her fears would’ve multiplied a hundred fold, the nightlight within having winked out with the power, and the lightning making the form of the porcelain monster inside contort and writhe with every flash, making it look like it was straining to uproot itself to find and devour her.

 

Zen stirred and turned to look at the clock on her nightstand, squinting in the darkness at the missing red, digital numbers that usually glowed beside her and pawed at the nightstand for her phone, closing her eyes as the screen lit up, the brightness assaulting her and bringing an annoyed groan from her throat as it registered that she still had hours of sleep before work in the morning. The crack of thunder made her jump and she looked over at Harry, jealous of his ability to sleep through nearly anything and shimmied out from beneath the dead weight of his arm to use the bathroom and check on Penelope.

 

Shuffling out the door of the bedroom, her vision still alight with blobs of color that wiggled out of her sight when she tried to look at them and back in front of her when she tried to see where she was going, Zen made her way to the bathroom, toes wiggling as her feet touched the cool tile of the bathroom floor, lifted the toilet seat and sat down, yawning as her bladder emptied into the bowl. Lighting flickered through the frosted window of the bathroom and she saw the lavender potty sitting beside the toilet she currently occupied. She sighed and began grabbing toilet paper as her stream subsided, wrapping it loosely around her hand before she spread her legs and wiped herself dry, patting her sensitive folds lightly for piece of mind before she dropped the paper into the bowl, stood and put the lid down and flushed the toilet before going to the sink to wash her hands.

 

Slightly more awake and with clearer vision, she padded down the hall to Penelope’s room and gripped the ornate glass knob, turning it slowly and gently pushing the door open, stopping when it started to creak in protest and holding her breath for some odd reason when she resumed pushing until she could slip through the space she’d made between door and frame and creep into the darkened room to the crib on the other side. She internally cursed herself for not bringing her phone for some kind of light to safely navigate the room, knowing that an errant toy left in the middle of the floor would do untold damage to her bare foot and fill the room with grunts and whines of frustration as she struggled not to cry out in pain and fill the room with strings of profanity unfit for little Penelope’s delicate ears, sleeping or not.

 

Her toes probed ahead and pushed a hard plastic something aside, brushed away a soft something that probably squeaked or rattled and cleared her path of devastating mines to allow her to approach the crib and look down on her baby girl. She couldn’t see most of her, not in the darkness, but she could see the white of her diaper and what appeared to be white, but was actually pink, of the half shirt she was wearing. These things being visible let her know that Penelope was uncovered and the warmth in the room made her okay with that fact, but the power being out meant that the ceiling fan was no longer circulating the air and she worried about the sleeping girl getting too warm in the night without it. Lighting flashed outside and she saw the pacifier Penelope slept with had fallen out of her mouth and she dutifully plucked it from where it lay beside the girl and gently reinserted it into her mouth, feeling it begin to lightly move as she sucked it instinctively.

 

Another boom of thunder made her jump again and brought the light rustle of movement from inside the crib and the soft whimpers of a pacified baby on the verge of waking. With the infinite wisdom of generations of mothers flowing through her body, Zen reached up and found the small winding dial on the mobile and turned it, gritting her teeth at the plastic sounding grinding of the device building up its energy to resume its gentle lullaby once more. With the tinny music now filling the room, she gently reached down and rubbed Penelope’s back to soothe her back to sleep, the rustling and whimpering ceasing to signal a crisis had been avoided.

 

Turning slowly, Zen made her way back out of the room, slipping through the crack in the door and gently pulling the door shut behind her before she turned the knob back to its resting position and let out the breath she’d been holding for who knew how long. She made her way back to her own bed and slid in beside Harry, kissing his strong arm as she pulled it over herself and sidled up to him, biting her lip as she felt his manhood against her bare backside and closed her eyes to try and fall back to sleep before she had to be up for work.

 

Penelope was a dreamer, but the stillness and warmth in her room affected her dreams as though they were candles, melting the stable, familiar forms into things of nightmares, twisted and misshapen things barely recognizable to her. In her dream she was playing on the carpet in her room, the furniture towering over her and displaying unsettling angles not normally seen. Her crib almost came to a pyramid like point high above her as it closed in on itself the higher the structure went, the changing table looked like a rickety skyscraper that swayed menacingly in the breeze coming through her window. The toy chest looked like it had died vomiting toys, the lid askew, toys dribbling out periodically to join the others in a heap in front of it.

 

Deafening, clomping footsteps accompanied by long, dragging scraping sounds approached her door from the hallway and when she looked she saw Zen stooped by the edge of the frame peering in at her, her normally brown, almost coffee colored eyes now almost a glowing white, her once flawless skin now covered in bubbling sores that made her look like her skin was made of thousands of tiny frog necks in various stages of inflation and deflation. Zen’s lips curled into a wicked looking smile, her radiant white teeth now yellowed and partially broken as if she’d been chewing on rocks and made her teeth into jagged shards of menace. “Time to go potty, Penelope.” came a wheezing hiss that didn’t immediately register as words to Penelope’s ears.

 

Penelope feared the bathroom even in the waking world, her dream self shaking her head and scooting backward as the disfigured Zen scurried into the room like a cockroach, skittering around the door frame and up the wall, her neck cracking awfully as she turned her head like an owl to look at Penelope from up near the ceiling.

 

“Mommy said,” the creature hissed before it scuttled across the wall and onto the wall behind her, ducking behind the crib monolith, the eyes shimmering beneath the crib to look out at her, blinking separately in a decidedly unsettling display, “potty time!” she rasped, her longer than acceptable arm jutting out from below the crib to grab Penelope’s wrist before she crab walked out from beneath the crib and yanked Penelope to her feet.

 

Frozen with fear, all Penelope could do was scream and cry as her legs futilely kicked at the air in protest as Not Zen stood to her full height and she was left dangling in the air by her arm.

 

Not Zen pulled Penelope in close to her and wrapped her arm around the girl, releasing her hold on the wrist she’d grabbed to hug the sobbing girl’s arms at her sides as she stalked toward the door.

 

“Please, Mommy, I don’t want to use the potty!” Penelope screamed, her legs still kicking in the air.

 

Not Zen chuckled, the sound like the screeching drone of a tree full of cicadas in the hot afternoon air, “Don’t you want to be a big girl like Mommy?” she asked, each word croaking out of her mouth wetly as though her throat were choked with some kind of thick fluid.

 

The proportions of the bathroom were worse than those of the nursery, the shower was practically an enclosed pit, the dark bottom of the tub looking nearly endless, the glass that enclosed it cracked and marred by blackish green streaks of something Penelope couldn’t name. The toilet, her greatest fear, was frozen in a yawn with the seat partially up, liquid dripping from it and the bowl like venom or salivation at the prospect of devouring a helpless baby. The tiles on the walls and floor were stained with reds, browns, and yellows, as though someone had had a very painful and very messy accident at some point prior to her arrival.

 

Not Zen stretched out her leg and hooked her backward bending toes against the backside of the cheerily colorful plastic training potty and pulled it to her, the scraping sound it produced like fingernails on a chalkboard making Penelope grit her teeth and writhe in agony while her captor seemed to delight in the sound as though it were music to her.

 

Her arms were released and she nearly slipped when her feet found the damp, slick tile floor, but Not Zen held her around the waist to steady her before she deftly ripped the tapes of her diaper, the garment falling to the floor with a heavy and thick plopping sound. Penelope looked down at it, surprised to find it clean and dry despite the sound it had made when it hit the floor, but her time standing was done according to Not Zen and she was unceremoniously pushed back onto the potty chair, the opening almost sucking her to it, keeping her stuck on it despite her wiggles and attempts to dislodge her bottom from it.

 

Not Zen took a step back and clawed at her clothes, shredding the already decayed looking rags until she was nude, her sore covered body and the unnatural angles of her limbs making her look like a diseased scarecrow as she backed to the real toilet and perched atop the seat like a gargoyle, looking down at Penelope like a hawk studying a terrified field mouse. “Mommy will show you how to potty.” Not Zen gurgled, her smile growing to a horrifying size as her head tilted much too far to be safe for her neck.

 

Penelope whimpered as she watched, unable to close her eyes and unable to look away, Not Zen demonstrate proper toilet use, by not at all using the toilet like a normal human being.

 

Not Zen began to pant like an elderly dog and foul smelling liquid gushed from her. The flow poured over the bowl, dousing the seat and the floor beyond, almost reaching the door at its maximum, the liquid spreading over the tiles and working its way back across the room to Penelope.

 

A squeal of disgust caught in her throat as she tried to lift her feet but found them stuck to the floor, the shockingly ice cold liquid pooling around her bare toes, the shock of the cold making her shudder as the sound of her own stream hitting the plastic insides of the potty battled with the wretched gurgling of Not Zen’s stream.

 

Not Zen clapped her hands and leapt from the toilet, her stream spraying across the glass of the shower enclosure as she turned midair and landed on all fours on the tile floor with a wet slap as her body landed in the sizable puddle of her own making, liquid still bubbling out of her as she sidled up to Penelope and breathed hot, stinking breath through her hideously mangled teeth, smiling at the little girl. “You are a big girl now, Penelope.” she growled.

 

Penelope shook her head in protest and tried to stop herself from peeing, but no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to stop her flow, the sound of liquid on plastic continued.

 

Not Zen nodded and looked over her shoulder at the real toilet. “He’s very proud of you.” she hissed. “Very excited to finally have a chance to taste your cute little bottom.” her words devolving into a hideous cackle as she threw her head back and toppled, hitting the floor with another wet slap as she rolled in her mess like a pig, laughing all the while.

 

*********

 

The sound of the crib side lowering woke her up with a start, her eyes opening and her vision adjusting to see Harry and Zen smiling down at her as Harry finished lowering the side of the crib.

 

“Good morning, beautiful girl!” Zen chirped lovingly as she reached in and gently slid the covers off of her.

 

Harry reached in and hooked his hands beneath her armpits and lifted her up from the mattress and against his body, his strong forearm supporting her bottom as he softly bounced her.

 

Zen’s long fingers lightly ran up her back and through her hair as she leaned in to kiss her cheek. “She’s pretty warm.” she told Harry.

 

Harry held his other hand to her forehead and turned it over to keep checking, “It was pretty warm last night, could be nothing.” he said. “You feel okay, princess?” he asked her.

 

She shook her head, “Hadda nimawe, Dada.” she said softly.

 

Zen and Harry exchanged looks and Zen rubbed her back softly. “Remember what we said about babytalk, Penelope?” she asked her.

 

She buried her face into Harry’s chest and hugged him tightly. “Bad Mama scawed me.” she whined.

 

“I think maybe she’s still too sleepy to know what she’s saying, hon.” he told Zen as he hugged Penelope and continued to bounce her.

 

Zen sighed. “We can’t ignore the babytalk, Harry.” she said. “She’s got to become a big girl at some point.” she reminded him.

 

“I know, but we agreed to let her decide when she was ready for that.” he reminded her.

 

She nodded, “Yeah, and here we are six years later still changing diapers and caring for an infant.” she told him.

 

He sighed and carried Penelope to the changing table, setting the girl down and laying her on her back. “Are we going to use the potty today, Penelope?” he asked her.

 

Penelope looked up at him and then at Zen as she came up along beside her, a hopeful smile on her face as she took held her hand.

 

“Don’t you want to be a big girl like Mommy?” Zen asked, the words identical to that of her nightmare doppelganger.

 

Penelope shut her eyes tightly and shook her head as she pushed down on her bowels and emptied them into the seat of her diaper, opening them to see the disappointed look on Zen’s face. “Me baby!” she burbled defiantly.

 

Zen sighed and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Clearly.” she said, her tone unimpressed with the display. She turned and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, “I’ll see you tonight.” she said, the pair sharing a kiss before she left the room.

 

Harry smiled down at her. “A simple ‘no’ would’ve sufficed.” he playfully chided her.

 

Penelope nodded. “I know, but she’s been such a hard ass about all of this potty training and being a big girl all of a sudden.” she groaned.

 

Harry sighed, “It’s coming up on the anniversary.” he reminded her.

 

Penelope’s normally pale skin went somehow paler. “Fuck, I can’t believe I forgot that.” she said sadly.

 

“You’ve been a little out of the loop.” he reassured her.

 

She had been, being a full time baby didn’t exactly keep you up to date on current events. “How’s she doing?” she asked.

 

Harry shrugged, “She’s been mostly normal, but she has these moments where it clicks in her head that babies shouldn’t still be babies six years after they’re born.” he explained.

 

Penelope shuddered involuntarily, remembering the night that Zen, her and Harry’s surrogate, had given birth to their stillborn baby. Everyone was devastated by the loss of course, but something broke inside Zen that night and six years later she still hadn’t recovered. Harry and Penelope had tried to get her to see someone, but she’d lost touch with reality and claimed to have no idea what they were talking about.

 

Things had started small, Zen braiding Penelope’s hair and cuddling with her on the couch when they gathered to watch television to distract from the pain, and gotten weirder as time went on, Zen talking to Penelope as though she were a small child when she found the shorter woman reaching for something on a high shelf in the kitchen, discovering the burner on the stove on for the meal Penelope was planning on making and scolding the woman about the dangers of ‘playing’ with the oven.

 

As time went on it became evident that Zen was seeing Penelope as the baby she’d lost, culminating in Zen coming into their bedroom one night while Zack was visiting family out of town and settling into the bed with Penelope and pressing her bare nipple to the woman’s mouth as she slept. Penelope was understandably confused and reluctant, but Zen seemed to be sleepwalking and Penelope had read that waking a sleepwalking person was very bad, though she couldn’t remember why, and so she accepted the nipple and suckled milk from it and found it to be delicious if not wholly strange to be doing so.

 

Penelope had been the one to broach the subject of playing the role of Zen’s baby, explaining to her husband the events of her impromptu breastfeeding session, and it was decided that they’d see what happened, certain that seeing a grown woman in a diaper and baby clothes would snap Zen out of her hallucination and allow life to get back to normal for all of them.

 

Six years later, the spare room was Harry’s office, the need for him to be a stay at home father to he and Zen’s perpetual infant daughter a constant argument from Zen. Penelope lived in the nursery, the crib changed out for one to better fit her adult frame and the changing table undergoing the same change, six years of full time diaper wearing and use had rendered her nearly completely incontinent, she still had some control of her bowels, but without access to the bathroom or freedom to come and go as she pleased, she just went when she felt the urge.

 

Harry and Zen shared the main bed, something that used to upset Penelope, but she’d made peace with it over the years, her time relegated to a second infancy altering her own reality to occasionally forget that she wasn’t actually Zen and Harry’s daughter, but that Harry was her husband, her only reminder of that being when Harry talked to her like an adult when Zen went to work.

 

“Maybe I should start potty training.” she said as he finished changing her soiled diaper, taping a fresh one on in its place. She thought about the nightmare she’d had and of her fear of the toilet and involuntarily wet the fresh diaper.

 

Harry had gone the extra mile making changes to the house when Penelope became he and Zen’s baby. The adult sized baby furniture was just what Penelope knew about, she wasn’t aware of the subliminal hypnosis embedded in the mobile she fell asleep listening to every night, the one that rewrote her thoughts to fear the toilet and need her diapers. She wasn’t aware that, while Zen had sadly lost the baby, that it was never he and Penelope’s but he and Zen’s, their secret affair resulting in an accidental pregnancy that they turned into a pretend surrogacy so that Zen could live with them and she and Harry could continue their affair when Penelope was at work or otherwise out of the house.

 

Zen never lost her grip on reality like some kind of soap opera heroine, she and Harry had concocted an elaborate scenario where she gradually pulled Penelope down into a second infancy through small gestures and the appearance that she’d gone crazy and saw Penelope as her lost child.

 

Harry had almost blown the whole thing when Penelope had suggested actually playing the role of Zen’s baby, the idea that his wife could be so stupid and misguided as to reduce herself to such a state was laughable and sad to him, but he played the part of reluctant and concerned husband to a tee and everything had gone off without a hitch, his wife was dealt with, literally pacified more often than not, and he was free to have sex with the woman he actually loved any time he wished without any protest from his wife.

 

Harry lifted her up from the changing table and hid a smile when he felt the already warm and damp diaper resting on his forearm. “Her lucidity comes and goes, hon, I wouldn’t worry about it.” he told her as he carried her out of the nursery and downstairs to the kitchen to set her in her highchair for breakfast.

 

As the sounds of cabinets opening and closing and her morning oatmeal being prepared filled her ears, Penelope smiled and happily kicked her legs in her highchair. Discovering she was being cheated on had stung, and she’d thought about revealing that she’d learned the truth about Harry and Zen’s affair and of the baby they’d lost, but she had the pair of them waiting on her hand and foot all day, everyday now, and all she had to do was be a good baby for them, which she’d been too afraid to tell Harry she’d wanted from him when they got married, but it seemed that fate had helped her out and given her exactly what she’d always wanted.

 

There were things she missed about being an adult, sex mostly, Harry had abandoned her sexually less than a year into her second infancy, but she’d found a toy in the toy box that scratched her itches perfectly so long as she remembered to turn the baby monitor off after she was put to bed for the night. She missed television, the baby shows she was allowed to watch were silly and brightly colored, but her mind longed for complex situations, hungered for detailed plots that she wasn’t entirely sure she could still follow now that her attention span had been diminished to being drawn to the previously mentioned bright colors and silly characters.

 

She definitely didn’t miss going to work, the memory of quitting her job all those years ago had faded significantly, but she remembered the bitchy women in the office and the boredom and the uncomfortable clothes and the commute and was glad to be rid of all of them. Going out was still a little nerve wracking, but she’d more or less tuned out the stares of other people, the quiet snickers at her expense as Harry pushed her around the market in the shopping cart, friends and family had adjusted or evaporated depending on their loyalty, leaving only a handful of true blue loved ones that visited for holidays or, she felt her cheeks flush at the memories, her perpetual first birthday parties.

 

Harry appeared in front of her and set the bowl of oatmeal he’d made for her on the tray of her highchair before he picked up the bib from the table and leaned in to secure it around her neck. Smiling at her, he spooned a pile of oatmeal onto the spoon in his hand and held it up to her mouth, popping It in when she obediently opened it for him.

 

Overall life was pretty good for everyone in the house, Zen had the man she loved and an obedient little baby woman to play with and dote on, living the life of a mother that she’d wanted even as a little girl. Penelope had two loving parents and a life free of stress and responsibility and all the diapers and baby time she could ever want. Harry had his lover, had his wife cowed into submission, completely dependent on him for everything, and once Penelope went down for his nap he could check in on his new mistress and discuss further their plan to hire her on as a nanny for Penelope.

 

The buzzing of his phone made him set the spoon down into the bowl of mushy oatmeal to pull his phone from his pocket. At some point he expected he’d have to deal with Zen before she realized he was cheating on her, and given how successfully and relatively easily they’d brought Penelope down to size, he’d been looking for a way to neutralize Zen without having to deal with a huge fight or any kind of drama if he could avoid it. The alert on his phone was to let him know that the hypnosis file he’d specially ordered had been shipped and he smiled as he put his phone back into his pocket and resumed feeding Penelope.

 

The hypnosis file he’d had crafted, if everything went to plan, would leave Zen with the idea that she was Penelope’s big sister, out of diapers, but still not completely a master of her potty training. He imagined the tall, Ebony goddess in training panties playing on the floor of the nursery with Penelope while he fucked their future Mommy in Daddy and Mommy’s room.

 

He smiled at Penelope, her cheeks, chin and bib already splotched with oatmeal with more than half the bowl to go. He wondered if keeping her around was for the best in the long term, the financial burden of a baby and a toddler at the same time would be significant, not to mention the amount of work it would be to care for two adults full time. Maybe he could find a hypnosis file to completely wipe her mind and have her declared mentally incompetent to bring in some money from the government to cover the cost.

 

“Dada?” Penelope asked sweetly.

 

He snapped his attention back to her and spooned another bite of mush into her mouth. “Sorry, baby, Daddy was thinking about something.” he told her.

 

She swallowed the offered mush obediently, “What was you thinkin’ Dada?” she asked.

 

He pushed the notion out of his mind and smiled at his wife, he couldn’t do something like that to her, she trusted him to protect her and take care of her. “Just wondering if the tickle monster is going visit today.” he teased.

 

Penelope giggled and bounced in her highchair, “Silly, Dada, the tickle monster isn’t real!” she chided him.

 

Harry gasped and looked around behind him, suddenly very serious, “Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice sounding frightened.

 

Penelope shook her head and looked around over Harry’s shoulders and shrieked when he turned back around suddenly and started tickling her tummy beneath the tray of the highchair.

 

Across town, Zen watched Penelope wriggling and giggling in her highchair on her phone through the camera overlooking the dining room and smiled as she sat at her desk. Harry’s mistress had contacted her and told her all about his plans and Zen had found his silly hypnosis order and contacted the creator to make some changes to it for her. While she listened to completely harmless music, she’d have Harry listen to the altered hypnosis files and before long she’d have herself a hopelessly devoted man servant who’s sole goal in life was to service her and care for Penelope. She thought about starting a relationship with the mistress herself, but decided that Penelope was cute enough to fool around with, if she ever decided to be a big girl like her Mommy that is.

 

The End