The Other World - Part 3 (Patreon)

Once Charlie had left the apartment, Lauren got to work. First, she turned on the television and found the daily news. The newscasters were the same mix of men and older women he'd seen outside. Unsurprisingly, the world seemed to be in the same state of chaos it was before she ended up... wherever she was right now. Lauren couldn't tell if she was relieved to see that the world was still in a consistent state of implosion or if that was a bad thing. In a society that doesn't value women, things wouldn't be much better. Men were responsible for 100% of the world's current wars anyway, Lauren thought with a bitter laugh.

Lauren headed to the laptop sitting on the kitchen bar and opened it. She noticed in the top corner of the screen there was a little touch bar. Lauren carefully placed her finger on the bar, but the computer said Access Denied.

Odd, she thought, Charlie was never one to lock his computer. They trusted one another completely. She tried her fingerprint again, but the computer wasn't happy with her. So instead, she typed in his password.

The computer sprang to life on something called "safe mode" - whatever that meant. Lauren found out a moment later exactly what that meant. When she tried to surf the web, all she kept getting back were educational results from scholarly sources about proper behavior for what the net referred to as “good girls.”

Lauren noticed a video titled, "All Grown Up." Clicking on it, she saw a man and a woman on the screen speaking to the camera. The voiceover spoke about the woman growing up and finally gaining her independence thanks to the man she had at her side. Lauren scoffed. Weren't we over this way of thinking by 2022? But that wasn't the only thing odd about the video. It mentioned the benefits of getting married included a few things, including opening your own bank account, shopping on your own, applying for a job, and (strangely enough) getting potty trained.

In shock, Lauren leaned back in her chair and squeezed her diaper cover again. She was wet. Lauren realized these two things had to be related.

Hold on a second. Lauren shook her head. How did she manage to pee again without realizing it?

More research on the computer showed her that the reason was simple. In this dream- or was it a reality at this point? - women weren't potty trained until after they got married.

What kind of bullshit was that?

And how did Lauren lose her function, considering she had been using the toilet just fine the day before?

Lauren did some more Googling and realized that potty training experience seemed to be a common practice, and the final stage of independence, for women. The former political operative wasn’t getting very far when she searched “unpotty training after waking up one morning.”

Lauren spent the next hour learning all she could about the new world she had just woken up into and soon realized that her diaper was completely full. She needed to get changed, stat. But when Lauren reached down to untape the diaper, she realized one critical fact: Charlie had the key to the locking diaper cover. This realization was brutal. Lauren wasn't getting changed anytime soon.

Lauren grabbed her phone and tried to text Charlie, encouraging him to come home and help her out. Still, her phone kept saying access denied leaving her feeling helpless. Charlie probably hadn't even thought she'd need a change, she was a big girl after all. But as one hour became two, Lauren began to get desperate.

Finally, Lauren had enough. She decided right then and there she was going to go to a hardware store and find a magnet to get this locking diaper cover off. Lauren reasoned that any strong magnet could get the job done. So she pulled on another pair of Charlie's sweatpants, a baggy tee-shirt and left the apartment. There was no way she was going to leak all over the furniture. Even in this fucked up world, Lauren still had her dignity.

***

Lauren's second time in the real world didn't fare any better than her first time going out. As she walked down the streets of New York, she couldn't help but gawk at the infantilized women all around her. While walking, Lauren spotted a woman who looked pretty professional, weaving through the crowd. Her fitted steel-gray suit looked remarkable on her body, hugging the subtle curves most perfectly. She was wearing a skirt suit combination that flared slightly at the bottom. Remarkably, the woman didn't have a male escort everywhere she went.

Lauren wasn't stupid however, she began to notice she was receiving a few disgusted stares from people as she continued walking towards what she figured would be the hardware store she knew a hardware store would be. The nervous woman figured the layout of New York had to be similar.

Men started doing double-takes.

Even the infantilized women were giving her side-eye.

Lauren chuckled to herself for a moment. They were probably not used to seeing a woman wearing sweatpants as young as she was. It was puzzling why this society put all young women in these infantile dresses. Didn't they care about how long they took to clean?

Lauren remembered when she was a kid and had spilled juice on her Sunday dress. Not only was she relegated to a week of using a sippy cup, but she remembered her mother explaining to her that she had to take the dress to get dry cleaned which was expensive.

Now, here she was in a future where these people clearly had no regard for how heavy their dry cleaning bill would be. This whole place was backward.

Lauren decided to focus on her mission and continued toward the hardware store. She did her best not to make eye contact with anyone. But this decision proved to be unwise. In Lauren's efforts to stay invisible, Lauren bumped into one of the young women/ babies walking down the street.

The woman was wearing a baby blue dress that hardly came down to her thighs and showed her diaper to the entire world. The diaper was white with blue polka dots all over it. Lauren was impressed; she was dressed in blue from her head to her toes down to the nail polish on her short nails.

This poor woman looked like she was 27.

"I'm sorry," Lauren said automatically, regaining her composure after a moment.

But the woman looked petrified. Lauren hadn't noticed it before, but the woman had a blue pacifier in her mouth that was actually tied around her head, rendering her unable to speak. But no sooner had the woman fallen backward, a man in a black tee-shirt and blue jeans spoke up.

"Tammy, haven't I told you to watch where you're going?"

Tammy, as this infantilized adult was named, somehow managed to look confused and panicked at the same time. "It wub my fawlb. Eye wasbnt atching."

The man gave Lauren a once over and frowned. He looked around as if looking for someone else, saw nobody, and decided to instead address Tammy again. "What do you say, Tammy?"

Tammy tried to speak over the pacifier in her mouth, Lauren could tell, but instead, all that came out was a bunch of drool and useless babble. The pacifier had rendered her speech to that of an infant.

The man was either unsure how the laws of physics worked or was looking for an excuse to punish this woman. "One more time Tammy, so this… (the man looked Lauren up and down with the disdain of a nation) confused person can hear you. I am not tolerating any more of your bullshit today."

Tammy babbled again, but it was still intelligible.

The man threw up his hands and dragged Tammy over to the nearest bench. "That's it, I'm tired of this nonsense." He proceeded to pull up Tammy's dress, and to Lauren's horror, began to spank Tammy right there in the middle of the town square.

Lauren was speechless as she watched this happen in front of her. Each time the man lifted his hand up and brought it back down on Tammy's extremely padded posterior, she'd let out a yelp. What made matters more perplexing was that no one stopped and said anything. It was as if spanking a grown woman in the middle of a town square was normal.

But then Lauren remembered where she was. In this world, this might just be completely normal.

With each smack, the man was enunciated a few key points.

"Shouldn't you be watching where you are going?"

SMACK

"Shouldn't you be seen and not heard?"

SMACK

"You need to listen and follow directions!"

SMACK.

Whether on the diaper or Tammy's lower thighs, the spanks reduced the infantilized woman to full-on tears. She was balling, kicking her legs, screaming as tears dripped onto the concrete below.

Lauren felt woozy watching this woman's rights be violated in such a publicly inappropriate way. Before she could stop herself, Lauren darted forward and shoved the man off of Tammy.

The man, startled, fell backward and looked up in surprise. Tammy looked speechless (I mean, she was, but even if she didn't have the pacifier in her mouth).

"Are you okay?" Lauren asked, extending a hand towards the battered woman.

Tammy turned over and straightened out her dress. Next, she grabbed Lauren's hand and used her momentum to stand up.

She nodded.

Noticing the gag was still in her mouth, Lauren unlocked it from behind her head and let the pacifier drop to the ground.

"Why did you?" Tammy started to ask, flexing her jaw muscles while rubbing the back of her diaper, no doubt in an attempt to alleviate the pain she was feeling from the spanking earlier.

"How do you let him talk to you like this?" Lauren shot the man a dirty look who had stood up finally, startled. "Or treat you like this?"

A crowd had started to gather. Shocked onlookers were pulling out their phones to record the scene in front of them.

"You're an adult woman. You have rights dammit." Lauren looked around and saw two police officers approaching. One of them was an older woman with gray hair, the other a younger-looking guy. "Officers," Lauren said dramatically, "This man was harassing this woman. You need to have a serious conversation with him."

But instead, the police pulled Lauren's hands behind her back, and she felt the feeling of zip ties being applied.

"Wait what…" Lauren watched as the police checked to see if the man, the very man who moments earlier had been spanking the woman, was okay. He nodded and negatively gestured towards Lauren as she was ushered away. The officer nodded and handed the pacifier gag formerly liberated from Tammy's mouth. Before the police car door closed, Lauren watched as it was reapplied to Tammy while the officers smiled.

**

Lauren wiggled her feet in frustration. This dream (as she stubbornly kept referring to this entire ordeal) was fucking lame. Lauren had been brought to a police station, and while yelling about her rights and wanting to speak to a lawyer, the officers just laughed and ignored her. They kept explaining to Lauren how cute it was that she thought she was all grown up.

It didn't help that once she was in the police station, one of the female officers had removed her sweatpants and shirt and left her in just her locking diaper cover. She was given a bib to wear (as if that was going to do anyone any good) and placed in an extremely large chair in a pastel-colored room. To Lauren's horror, the chair turned out to be a high chair ensuring her legs were not touching the floor anytime soon.

But Lauren was angry. Earlier today, she stood up for human rights and wasn't in the mood to be babied or coddled. In her mind, this was a complete and utter human rights violation, and if she had it her way, she'd be speaking to the Supreme Court in a few months. What would Ginsburg have to say about this? she thought with an evil laugh in her mind.

Only after calming down, Lauren wondered if there was a Justice Ginsburg in this dream? She then wondered bitterly if the Justice was still alive.

Lauren knew that her anger had gotten her into trouble in the past. It always had. This is why today, when her captives placed fruit in front of her to eat, she shoved it off the table and crossed her arms in front of her defiantly. They tried again and Lauren continued to be a problem inmate and shoved the next batch of food off the tray, declaring loudly, "I want my lawyer!" Sadly, this did not have the effect she was going for.

Two officers simply entered the room and placed Lauren's hands in thick mittens, similar to those her mother had put her in earlier in the day. Afterward, the officers left the mittened girl in the room to deal with the grumbling in her stomach and the pure helplessness Lauren felt creeping into her soul.

After sitting in the baby room (as she called it) for about an hour, the pain in her stomach grew worse. Before she knew it, she needed a change. Lauren had to lift herself up slightly from her chair to make the process easier, but she didn't have much wiggle room because she was buckled in. After doing the most infantile deed, Lauren realized to her horror that she needed to sit back down at some point and began to softly cry at this shallow moment.

Lauren wanted Charlie. She simply wanted to go home. In this low moment, the revolutionary mindset that had governed her entire ego had simply given up, and now she felt like shit.

"Shut up," Lauren said to no one as her clever mind taunted her.

"Please let me out!" Lauren yelled over and over to no one in particular.

But no one came.

Lauren was alone.

***

About an hour later, someone did come in. An officer who looked maybe about 40 years old and wearing a tee-shirt that fit tight against his biceps opened the door and walked over to the high chair where Lauren was being held.

Lauren suspected he got the shirt a size smaller than he needed to.

"Lauren," he said quietly. "Please don't yell. I'm here to help."

Lauren was suspicious. No police officer she'd met today was just trying to help.

"Who are you?"

"I'm officer Richardson." The man said, pulling up a stool next to the high chair and placing a few jars of baby food on the tray in front of her. "You can call me Eric for now, though."

"Can you take the mittens off?"

"No, it's kinda SOP for someone like you who has really fucked up around here." Eric motioned to the camera on the other side of the room. "But if you're willing to give me thirty seconds, I can tell you what will happen next that will ensure you get out of here."

Lauren crossed her arms again and wiggled in the high chair. Her legs had fallen asleep, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she smelled worse than she thought. What if this was a trick? What if this was just another way for the police to pin more charges on her?

Lauren paused for a second and realized she had no idea what she was being charged with anyway.

"Fine." Lauren relaxed her mittened hands. "I'll play ball for a little bit. What's going on."

Eric opened a jar, dipped a spoon into it, and moved the spoon towards Lauren's mouth.

Lauren hesitated.

"You said you'd cooperate."

Lauren opened her mouth. The mixture wasn't bad. It tasted like apple pie, just in purred form.

"Not bad right?" Eric dipped the spoon into the jar again. "Charlie is here. The officers were able to find him and get him down here. He'll come here in just a moment."

Lauren tried to contain her excitement, suddenly understanding that if Charlie came, he'd be seeing her being fed like a baby, in a messy diaper, in a highchair.

"When Charlie walks into this room, do not say anything wrong. Just tell him you're happy to see him. Tell him you're sorry and that you'll be a good little girl from now on."

"Excuse me?" Lauren frowned.

But Eric glanced around and shoveled some more of the apple pie mixture into her mouth, this time missing entirely. He used the bib to wipe the side of her face. "I don't have much more time, so shut the fuck up and listen."

Lauren quieted down.

"I know you're not from here, and neither am I. But the only way we can get home is if you make it back home, and we can meet again."

"Wait, you know we're not from…"

"Lauren, listen to me. You need to find the Equity Order forum. I will find you there. Remember that, Equity Order."

The doors behind Eric swung open and a few more officers entered the room. "Officer Richardson was just keeping the little one company," one of the other officers said smiling, and they ushered Charlie across the room towards Lauren.

Eric wiped Lauren's face with the bib and joined the other officers, "Yes ma'am, she's a growing girl, she has to eat."

Lauren frowned, not enjoying this infantilized speech, but then she remembered Eric's advice and looked at Charlie.

"Baby, I'm so sorry," she said, with minimal regret in her voice. "I didn't mean any of it. Please, I just want to go home."

The officers in the room looked at Charlie who glanced around, then nodded stiffly. "Can I take her home?"

"Are you sure you don't want us to issue any corrective measures?" one of the officers in the room asked.

"Corrective measures?" Charlie was puzzled and kept glancing at Lauren as if he were afraid she was broken.

"Yeah," one of the officers pointed to Lauren. "We are happy to spank her. You know, corrective measures."

Charlie shook his head, fumbling his words for a moment. "No need. We'll take care of this at home." After a second, he hastily added, "Do I need to sign anything?"

The other officers shook their heads as they released Lauren from her high chair. "No need. She's free to go with you…" the officer laughed and pinched his nose. "And from the smell of things, it smells like your little girl is fully loaded."

Charlie grimaced slightly as Lauren waddled over towards him. Another officer handed Charlie a dress, similar to the one she was forced to wear earlier and he helped her put it over her head (you'll need clothes if you're going to be outside). Next, they handed Charlie a paper bag. "Little girl was wearing your clothing earlier," the officer said. "Cute."

Before they knew what was happening, they had exited the police station and were walking back to Charlie's apartment. Lauren was quiet the entire time, humiliation burning inside of her. As she waddled bowlegged up the steps of the brownstone, she couldn't help but wonder about Eric's insistence that she look at the equity order. What the hell was that anyway and how would it help them get home?