The Big Rest [Tier 2 and 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

I once read a book about a man convicted of murder. Some of the details have slipped my memory by now - the irrelevant ones. But he was seen as a person of interest almost immediately, though he denied having any involvement in the incident. Over the next few weeks, as investigators found more clues, they’d bring him in for more questions. In each round of questioning, they’d seem to have a better picture of what had happened the night of the murder, and it was clear that they believed that he had played a part in this. Yet he continued to deny it. More evidence, more questions, more denial - and so was the routine.

But it got to a point where there was actually an overwhelming amount of evidence that supported the theory that he was the murderer. His alibis had been shot down and damning traces of DNA had been found in places it wouldn’t have been if he was innocent. And, seeing that he was finally caught, he confessed. And while he was at it, he confessed everything. Details that they hadn’t known about - nor might not have ever known about if he hadn’t said anything. He painted a vivid of picture of all events leading up to, during, and after the murder. He had even opened up about other crimes that he had yet to be associated with.

And then, in the words of the murderer, he had the best night of sleep he had ever had in his entire life. Weeks - years - of managing lies and secrets had finally been put to an end. All the stress he carried around with him was suddenly gone. He hadn’t even realized how much of his body and mind had been taxed everyday by his efforts to craft an alternate reality. With that expelled from him, his body was finally allowed to just rest.

I think most days I’d consider myself to be a pretty happy person. Well-spirited. Content. Yet, I think about this story often - this concept of the soul-crushing stress we put ourselves through to try and control our own narratives - and I wonder if I’m missing out on that restful sleep that I could only get from finally surrendering the truth.

The Big Rest, I call it. Somewhere at the end of the bloody gauntlet of the truth, The Big Rest waits for me. And when I wake up, I’m reborn into a world where I don’t have to lie about who I am anymore.

--

It began with a cup of coffee. Actually, the story begins long before the cup of coffee, but this is where the latest chapter - perhaps the last - begins.

I was running late. There was a good portion of my life where I prided myself on being punctual. I had a reputation for being punctual, in fact; to the degree where it was often weaponized and made into a joke.

“The party starts at 8:00 PM. So, I’ll see Josh at 7:50 and I’ll see everyone else at, like, 9?”

I didn’t mind it, really. Of all the things to be ribbed for, I was happy that it was dependability rather than, say, someone like Edwin - who was often called Crabs on account of a disastrous trip to Cancun during a college Spring Break many years ago.

The problem with a reputation like this, however, is that when you suddenly fail to meet that expectation, people start asking questions. And I had been slipping. For a few weeks, I was showing up late to appointments, meetings, and meetups. My friends, family and co-workers were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt for a small window of time, but I had quickly scorched my way through that goodwill.

People were asking questions. My wife, Sheila, had a lot of questions.

“Are you taking drugs?”

“Are you drinking?”

“Are you depressed?”

“Are you...seeing someone else?”

I could only imagine what sorts of things had been going on in her mind as this new reality began to unfold. What did she imagine while she waited for me to show up after I said I would? What was her biggest fear?

So I was running late. Not only was I late, but I was exhausted. For no particular reason beyond just the stress of keeping secrets. Which, on most days, was more than enough to wear me down. I was meeting Sheila at her office to pick her up from work - I had taken her car to get its oil changed that morning - but I desperately needed a jolt of energy. I stopped at a drive-thru donut shop and got myself a large hot coffee in the hopes of stimulating myself.

Yet, no more than two minutes after merging back onto the highway, in an effort to take a sip of the hot coffee the lid had come off and a large cup’s worth of hot brown liquid splashed across my chest. I had lost control of the car, and while I had managed to veer away from other cars, I still ended up hitting a mile-marker on the side of the highway and blew out a tire.

It was far from the worst it could’ve been, but it wasn’t good either. The sign had taken out a headlight and scraped up the side of the car pretty badly, and the tire was shredded. Worse, when I dug into the trunk for the spare, I found it in an usable state - it had experienced some sort of dry-rot that had compromised the rubber.

I had quickly compared the options of calling a tow-truck for myself and eating the cost of it, or getting the number for our motorists club membership - for complimentary towing - from Sheila. The latter seemed better for many reasons - but it also came at a price: I’d have to explain why I had an accident where I did.

Because, you see, I wasn’t where I said I was going to be.

I sighed and made the call.

“Hey, babe,” Sheila said, answering on the first ring. “You almost here?”

“No…”

“Really? Late again?”

“Sheila, I, uh, had an accident.”

“With the car? Oh my god. Josh, are you okay? What happened? Where are you?”

So many questions with her.

“I’m okay,” I said. “The car is fine too. Well...it took a little damage, but it’s not that bad. I spilled coffee and I swerved and… The tire is fucked. And the spare is no good, so I need to get towed.”

“Coffee?” she asked, skeptically. As opposed to drugs or alcohol, I supposed. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“And is everyone else okay?”

“This one road sign isn’t doing too well,” I said. “But maybe after some reconstructive surgery…”

“This is not the time for jokes,” she said.

“I’m okay,” I reassured her. “Look, all I need is the number to the motor club. I’ll get a tow and we’ll get everything straightened out.”

“Well, where are you?” she asked. “I can come get you. Connie is almost done with work too, and she can pick me up and…”

“No,” I said. “Really, just the number is all I need. There’s no reason to come down here.”

“Okay, fine,” she said. “Let me find it here.”

For the next minute or two, she was flipping through papers and rifling through her purse. I didn’t think it would be that hard to find, but I also knew that I couldn’t say that without acknowledging the fact that I was on the side of the road without that information in my wallet either.

“Good news and bad news,” she finally said.

“Okay?”

“I found the membership info…”

“But?”

“...it lapsed last month.”

“How could it have lapsed? I thought we set up automatic payments?”

“We did,” she said, “but then your credit card had gotten compromised, remember? We had to cancel the card and get a new one. We must not have updated the account.”

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. Everything she said was completely accurate and made sense to me. Except, that - within those accurate statements - were more lies that had yet to be revealed to her.

For as careful as I had been in setting up my web of lies, there was no stopping random elements of chaos from intervening and destroying everything. She was closer now than ever in accidentally unraveling everything.

“It’s not a big deal,” I continued. “I’ll just call a tow truck and have them take me and the car to the garage.”

“You might be out there for hours waiting,” Sheila said. “Call a tow truck, but then just tell me where you are. Connie will take me home and I’ll take your car to come get you.”

“No, that’s really not necessary…”

“Goddammit, Josh. Just let me help you, okay? Where the hell are you?”

I wanted to lie. I wanted to just hang up the phone and throw the phone into the woods. But I knew my limits with Sheila. There was a time to add to the web and there was a time to let things be what they actually were. She’d have questions, but I would at least have time to consider the answers.

“I’m on I-44,” I said. “Just past Exit 20.”

“44? What the hell were you doing near -”

“Just come get me and we can talk about it later.”

“Alright,” she said. She sounded frustrated but composed. “Connie’s taking me home now. From our house to you, it’s like…”

“An hour and a half,” I said. “Maybe less if you beat the rush hour traffic.”

“Alright. See you soon.”

“Love you, Sheila.”

She said nothing else, and the call ended.

--

She arrived just as the tow truck had begun to lift the front of the car into the air with it’s chain. I didn’t think that a tow-truck would’ve arrived as quickly as it did, but it was as if they were just waiting for opportunities like this to fall into their laps.

“What the hell?” The first words out of her mouth when she got out of the car. She was looking at the front of her car, which looked worse than it was - or so I suspected. Nothing insurance couldn’t help foot the bill for.

“I’m sorry,” I said. A genuine statement.

“What happened again?”

“The lid came off my coffee cup,” I said. The truth, again. “The hot coffee spilled all over me -” it was important, I thought, not to phrase it as if I had spilled the coffee on myself “-and I lost control of the car.”

I looked down at myself as I waved my hands in front of myself to show her the brown stains in my white and black plaid shirt. I realized that it had been the first time I had looked at myself since the accident. Coffee had indeed stained my shirt and pants - which I could deal with just fine. But what I hadn’t expected was the thin white plastic ruffles sticking up under the waistband of my pants.

I could’ve fainted right there - how could I have been so careless?

With a single quick motion, I adjusted my shirt, letting it hang over my pants and conceal my secret.

Either she didn’t notice it, or this wasn’t the place she wanted to acknowledge it.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

--

“So,” she finally said after a good ten minutes of complete silence. “Do you want to tell me what you were doing out here?”

“Well I had to get the oil changed…”

“We’ve been going to the same garage for six years and it’s two blocks from our house, Josh. Try again.”

“Right, but this place - this other garage - had a coupon and it was less than half the price so…”

“I don’t care if the place was doing an oil change for a dollar. Do you really expect me to believe that you decided to drive almost two hours from home, in my car, so that you could get a slight discount on an oil change?”

I said nothing. I had put a lot of thought into the things I’d say at this moment, but now that I was there, none of it seemed especially effective.

“Can we talk about what this is really about?” she asked.

“Why does it have to be about anything?” I responded. A weak argument, but I was pulling at straws.

“So you don’t think you have anything you need to come clean about?”

If it felt like a trap, it was probably a trap. It was the sort of question that somebody would ask only if they knew more than they had let on. And so I was blindly backed into a corner and I had only a few options: Say nothing, offer up a little, or offer up everything.

I tried calling her bluff: “No, I don’t think I do.”

This was a dangerous game to play. Because if she allowed that to be the end of the conversation, I wouldn’t know if it was because she didn’t actually know anything, or she just didn’t want to reveal what she knew.

“I think you should reconsider that answer,” she said.

“What is it that you think you know?” I shot back.

“Well, let’s set aside whether or not I know anything for just a moment. Let’s look at just this moment alone. 90-some minutes from home - when you know you were supposed to pick me up from work - and you’re wearing a diaper.”

I felt my heart sink into my chest. I had been so foolish. Of course she caught the glimpse of the diaper when I moved to hide it. I wondered if I would’ve been able to recognize an adult diaper by the slight sight of some plastic edges alone.

I didn’t dawdle long to respond, but in that brief amount of time, I thoroughly analyzed my options. “I...have issues with my bladder.”

“That’s a lie,” she said, staring straight ahead at the road as she drove.

“How do you know that?”

She sighed. “Really? You’d like me to list the reasons? Okay, fine. Let’s say that you were wearing an adult diaper because you suddenly started having accidents. You expect me to believe that of all the options you - an adult man - had when this started happening was to find the biggest, bulkiest adult diaper possible instead of, I don’t know, seeing a doctor? Wearing something more subtle? Talking to your wife about it?”

She had laid out a pretty good argument.

“Biggest and bulkiest? You could...tell?”

She sighed. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

“I want you to think very carefully before you answer that,” she continued. “Because I think that someone who respected my intelligence would’ve known - long before this moment - that I knew more than I was supposed to.”

“What...what do you know?”

“I’m tempted to say ‘everything,’ but I’m not as stupid as you think I am,” she said. “For every one thing I know, I have no doubt that there are three more things that I do not.”

“What do you think you know?” I asked - a rephrasing of my previous question. I didn’t like how aggressive it sounded, but I felt myself slipping into survival-mode.

“I know that you wear diapers because you have some sort of fetish,” she said. “And I know where you keep your diapers, because I’ve seen them. Pink and blue with teddy-bears on them. Pacifiers. Onesies. Bibs. Bottles.”

It honestly felt really good to hear her say that. It was a hit of dopamine to just hear her say those words. One less thing to have to protect.

“But there’s more, isn’t there?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Is there any answer that I could give that you’d believe? If that was the truth, and I said no, would you believe that?”

“No.”

“Do you know more?” I asked her.

“Where do I even start? I know that whatever else it is that you’re doing, you’re spending a lot of money doing it. I saw some of the credit card statements. I can’t identify most of the charges, but I see that you’re giving someone a lot of money.”

I said nothing.

“Your old credit card wasn’t compromised, was it?” she asked. “What happened there? Was it overdrawn?”

I carefully considered how I could weave my next lie. I searched for a trapdoor or some means of escape. But when I opened my mouth, only the truth came out: “Bella.”

--

I hadn’t intended to cheat on Sheila as much as I intended to find a space - somewhere outside of the view of my marriage - where I was able to indulge in the things that I didn’t like to talk about. I didn’t want another partner - god knows I wasn’t an especially great boyfriend or husband for just one woman let alone many - but I did need someone to bear the weight of my needs and help direct me.

It was an entirely selfish desire - but I figured that I’d either find someone who held a desire to be the Mommy to my Baby, or...I’d meet someone who would give me what I wanted as part of a transaction.

And when I had exhausted the local scene of all potential willing Mommy-types, Bella had been waiting. All my fantasies and dreams would be coming true, so long as I kept my wallet wide-open.

It started small. She’d give me tasks to complete each day, and I’d report back with evidence that those tasks had been completed. We started small. She’d just ask me to wear a diaper to work. Then I’d have to wet my diaper at work. Then I’d need to wet my diaper at work and change myself in the restroom. I’d have to go to the grocery store and buy more baby wipes - recording myself telling the cashier that I had run out because I had been having too many accidents.

I did as she asked, even as things continued to ramp up and become more dangerous. I was doing most of the work - she was simply a curator of my humiliation. She’d offer an idea and then she’d approve the results. And as long as I completed her tasks - and continued to pay her - the game would continue.

I was never clear on whether or not she was talking to other people, or how many had come before me. I knew very little about her, really. Bella was almost certainly not her real name. She would usually send me a picture of herself every day - usually with a disapproving look following my report on what I had done that day. Bella existed as a concept, if not a person, and that had been enough for me.

She was an effective saleswoman, slyly offering new opportunities to indulge in her services. “For a little more,” she said, “I could call you and be on the phone with you while you completed today’s tasks.”

Sheila and I, we weren’t poor. We weren’t rich, but we were certainly getting by. I had a working system for a while of paying Bella for her services with my credit card and paying off the card quickly. But things had begun to get away from me. I was always wanting more - and she was always willing to supply more if I had the money to put up for it. Suddenly I was spending money I didn’t have, and I had taken on more credit cards - more debt - without anticipating the point where I’d actually need to find money to satisfy those debts.

And had I the ability to step back and look at everything that was happening, I’d have seen that I was careening towards a brick wall. Not only was the spending getting out of hand, but Bella’s requests were getting harder to pull off.

Bella saw something in me - a feverish dedication to her brand of darkness that perhaps few others were willing to be beholden to - and she used it to her advantage. When she asked me to jump, I asked how high. And then she’d tell me to jump higher than I had ever jumped before.

--

On the day of the accident and subsequent tense confrontation with Sheila, I was going to a hospital, of all places. It was the latest in a series of severely ill-advised stunts put in motion by Bella.

Unlike most of her ideas that started in a more grounded place - go the mall, go to McDonald’s, go to the gym, etc. - this one had seemed especially questionable and dangerous from the get-go. Two weeks ago she asked me to set up an appointment with my family physician. I practically had tears in my eyes when I explained that - regardless of what she expected me to do - I was fearful of involving the doctor that my wife and I had been seeing for the last ten years.

The sad thing is, I would’ve gone through with it if she had demanded it, but she had relented; one of the rare occasions that had occurred. We compromised, with her asking me to instead make an appointment with a new doctor, out of town. I did, and two weeks later I was walking into Dr. Kenner’s office for the first time. Hopefully the last time.

Dr. Kenner asked if I had seen another doctor before her - one that she could get my past medical files from. I lied, explaining that I hadn’t seen another doctor in years. I wondered if my health insurance would later rat me out - pointing to the years of visits with my usual doctor, Dr. Hasselman. But I convinced myself that either it was not an issue, or if it was, I’d be long gone.

Dr. Kenner asked me what brought me into her office. And I said the things that Bella had told me to say.

“I...uh, have been having accidents lately. Like, bathroom accidents?”

“How frequently would you say that you’ve been having accidents, Joshua?”

If it sounded natural, it was only because lying had become my default setting: “Often enough, I’d say. It’s far more likely that I end up having an accident than it is that I make it to a toilet. If I do make it to the toilet, it’s only because I happened to be near one at the right time.”

“Just wetting?” she asked. “Or…”

“E-everything,” I said. I could’ve left it at that, but I had come for the humiliation. I quickly added: “I’ve been pooping my pants.”

“I have to be honest with you, that is a bit concerning. You’re, what, 33? Someone your age shouldn’t be experiencing that sort of difficulty with making it to the bathroom on time. How long have you been dealing with this?”

“Three weeks,” I said.

“And before you came here today to see me, how have you been treating it?”

This was the moment that Bella, wherever she was, had been waiting for. She’d savor my description of this conversation later - likely wishing that she had been here herself. She would have no reason to doubt that I would lie to her about how this moment played out. She was the only one I couldn’t lie to, and I lived only to serve her whims.

“Diapers,” I said.

“I see,” Dr. Kenner said. “I think we could both agree, then, that you did the right thing by coming in to see me today. I mean - obviously - we need to determine the cause of where these accidents are coming from so that we can treat it effectively. But, too, for your own comfort and peace of mind - I’m sure you don’t want to be a young man walking around in a diaper.”

She was wrong, but I would never tell her as much.

When Bella and I talked about how this little stunt would go, she had a very specific endgame in mind. She knew how she wanted this visit to end. And me, so eager to please and impress, was so caught up in that goal that I failed to consider what this appointment was actually going to be like. Because there I was, sitting on the examination bench in this doctor’s office and this very nice woman was spending time and energy in trying to treat a fictional ailment.

“This isn’t going to sound too pleasant,” Dr. Kenner said. “But this isn’t something we can throw medicine at and hope it goes away. Sudden incontinence - both bladder and bowels - can be signs of something more severe.”

“Couldn’t it just be...like, stress?” I asked. It had been Bella’s suggestion to use ‘stress’ if asked why I thought this was happening. In Bella’s words: Stress is a medical catch-all. You can blame anything on stress and people just accept it.

“I suppose it’s possible,” the doctor said. “Unlikely, but possible. To be sure, I think we’d need to do some more thorough investigating.”

“How so?” My heart was beating faster. What had Bella gotten me into?

“There are two tests that I want to move forward with. And hopefully they yield some answers that help us determine what we need to do to treat this.”

“Okay,” I said apprehensively. I did not like the sound of ‘tests.’

“So, like I said, this isn’t going to sound too pleasant - but we have to do what we have to do. I’d like to get a digital rectal exam in today.”

I heard the words, but they didn’t really compute. “Digital? Like...a computer?” I imagined a little wand that she’d wave over my ass and an image showing up on the computer screen.

“No…” she said, in an almost-condescending tone that had hints of ‘You poor sweet child.’ “Digital as in...digits. Fingers.”

“O-oh…”

“I know this doesn’t sound too fun, but I promise it’ll be over quickly. What I need to do is test the strength of your sphincter muscles. And there’s really not a better way to do that than to use my own fingers.”

And suddenly I was bent over the physician’s table, my pants and diaper pulled down mid-thigh as I heard the stretch of the latex gloves she put on her hands. The sound of a lubricant being squeezed out of a tube into her hand, followed by the sticky sound of it being spread across the fingers she needed - the digits, as it were.

“I apologize in advance if this is uncomfortable,” she said. “I promise this will be quick.”

This had never happened before. My own fingers, maybe. Toys and other objects at the request of Bella. But never before had it been another woman’s fingers. I let out a soft moan as they entered me, immediately feeling absolutely pathetic for having done that. But my shame didn’t end there. Sandwiched between my body and the examination table was my cock, slowly taking shape and coming to life. Seriously? Now? Of all times?

“It’s okay,” she said softly as she probed me. “It actually happens all the time.”

I wondered if she meant the moan or the erection.

“Okay, I think we’re good with that,” she said, pulling her fingers from my bottom. “Why don’t you go ahead and get your pants and, uh…” I could tell that she was almost going to mention the diaper but thought better of it. I quickly pulled up everything.

She made a few notes on the chart, letting me stew in the surreal situation I had put myself in for the meantime.

“Everything seems okay with the muscles,” she said finally. “Honestly, if anything, you might be a little backed up. That doesn’t sound especially helpful for you, I’m sure, but it’s still helpful. It rules out a lot of things.”

I nodded, unsurprised that my ass muscles were working just the way that they should’ve been.

“The next step is going to be bigger picture,” she continued. “I’m thinking we will do an MRI next. Really get a good feel for what all is going on in there. We can see if there’s issues with your muscles. It could even be something with your nerves or spine - we just won’t know until we do the MRI.”

Again, I nodded. What she said made sense, but she might as well have been talking to someone else. I didn’t need an MRI, and I wouldn’t be getting one either.

“I’m going to set you up with an appointment at Cedar Ridge Medical,” she said. “It’s the most local hospital to this office and I’m pretty confident I can get you an appointment in the next week or two.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking down at the ground.

We went through a few typical doctor-visit things. She looked into my ears, she drew some blood, checked my blood pressure. She’d find nothing that I didn’t already know about. I patiently waited for this nightmare to wrap up.

I had one last task to do here, in poor Dr. Kenner’s office.

“So, until we do more testing,” she was saying, “it might help us if you could be more mindful of your diet. I’m not asking you to change much. But maybe avoid excessively greasy foods if you can help it. It wouldn’t hurt for you to write down what you’re eating too. Just in case there’s a dietary issue we need to look at if the, uh, accidents continue.”

I slid off of the exam table and stood before her. I nodded politely, but my mind was a million miles away. In order to perform this last task, I had withheld using the toilet for the last 36 hours. Dr. Kenner wasn’t wrong when she said I was backed up. Here goes nothing.

My biggest fear was that at this moment, I’d be caught squatting in front of her, grunting and pushing as I filled my diaper - thus proving that this entire visit had been a scam. To both my relief and horror, my desperate and fatigued bowels were more than willing to make this a quick evacuation.

With a single epic ‘blart,’ the back of my diaper expanded and a lumpy mass was outside of my bowels. There was no mistaking what had happened, and she immediately stopped writing in her chart so that she could look up at me.

This time she wasn’t as careful about her words: “Did you just have an accident in your diaper?”

I nodded, my face beet-red and my heart melting down into molten tissue from having to pound so fast. The stench of my mess was almost immediately thick in the air - a putrid scent that I could only associate with a bowel movement that was long overdue.

She nodded politely and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

The answer to that was infinitely more complicated than she could ever know. “It’s...just embarrassing.”

“We’re wrapped up here,” she said. “What do you need to clean up?”

“Oh...I have…” I realized that everything else I would need - diapers and wipes - were in the car.

She pointed to a drawer in the cabinets against the wall. “There’s some wet wipes in there, and the room next door is a bathroom. Why don’t you take your time and do whatever you need to do to clean up.”

I nodded.

“Do you need help?” she asked. “I could probably have someone come aid you if you need.”

I wished she hadn’t asked that, because I knew that I’d forever be thinking about what would’ve happened if I had been stupid enough to accept that offer. But I shook my head. I suspect the doctor was just being polite, and I didn’t want to see the temperament of a busy nurse who had to take time out of her day to help clean the ass of a 30-something man.

When Dr. Kenner stepped out, I completed my task. I pulled down my pants, pulled my firm cock out of the front of my diaper, and proceeded to sit back down on the exam table in my dirty mess. And then I shot a handful of photographs to send to Bella later that would accompany my story of how I shit myself during a doctor’s appointment and then pleasured myself to it.

And later, as I relayed the story to Bella - complete with the walk of shame from the exam room, past the front desk and through the lobby to get out the front door - I mentioned that the doctor had even scheduled me to have an MRI.

“Well,” she said, “you have to go to that.”

“What? But...I don’t need an MRI.”

“They don’t know that,” she said. “You’re going to go and you’re going to wear a diaper. And you’re going to fill your pants again while getting the MRI.”

And that was the reason I had driven almost two hours away from home. To get an MRI for a condition that I didn’t have, all while furthering the narrative that I was an incontinent young man. An incontinent young man who, once again, loaded his diaper in the presence of a polite MRI technician who was just trying to do her job.

I had been given all the space and time to change my diaper and clean myself up in the hospital. Enough time, too, to show Bella what I had done.

Less than an hour later, I’d be spilling hot coffee on myself and crashing through a road sign.

--

“Who is Bella?” asked Sheila. It might have been the second or third time she asked me that question. Things got a little hazy for me there after I had muttered the name aloud.

“That’s a complicated story,” I said.

“Well, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Especially with traffic getting worse. Why don’t you give it a whirl?”

This was it - that long bloody gauntlet that I had arranged myself over the last few years. And at the end of it? The Big Rest.

For perhaps the very first time in our entire relationship, I told the truth. Not just carefully curated parts of it - the entirety of it. Every detail, no matter how terrible it sounded.

I told her about my diaper fetish and my need to experience public humiliation. I told her about my attempts at securing a secret relationship with another woman for the sole-purpose of being my Mommy.

“And you couldn’t find someone willing to just devote their entire life to pleasing you when you felt like it?” she had quipped.

I told her of Bella. Bella, whose corrupt imagination rivaled - perhaps surpassed - my darkest fantasies. I told her of the days spent running around retail stores and shopping malls in dirty diapers. I told her about stopping employees at the clothing store and asking them where the restrooms were so that I could change my diaper.

I told her about the time I went to the gym and sat in the middle of the locker room in just a diaper while I pretended to untie my shoe. I told her about the time I went to a fast food burger restaurant and ordered a large soda, just so I could immediately overturn the cup into my diaper right in front of the counter.

I told her about the time a police officer was called to escort me out of a clothing store because I had been “lurking,” when in actuality I had been waiting for the right time to complete the task of walking across the entire sales floor with my thumb stuck in my mouth. It was a miracle that the story hadn’t ended worse and that the exhausted police officer was fine with letting me go “be weird somewhere else.”

There were other stories and incidents, but they were just variations on other stories. I told her a handful of them, leaving it open if she wanted more later.

I told her about going to Dr. Kenner’s office and the chain of events that would bring me to the side of the road waiting for Sheila to pick me up.

It was about that time we had gotten home.

“I don’t think you need me to tell you that you’re involved in some very dangerous things,” she finally said, not having said a word in a long time.

“I know this.”

“Is there more?” she asked. “Is there more I need to know?”

“Probably,” I said. “If I’m being honest.”

“Well, that’s...a lot.”

I nodded.

“I think I need some time to process that,” she said. “I don’t know how I feel about any of that.”

“I understand.”

“This probably goes without saying,” she said to me. “But maybe you should sleep in the spare room for now.”

--

I hadn’t checked my phone in a few hours. Not since I had been in the car with Sheila, actually. I knew it had vibrated a few times - likely Bella checking in with me to see how things went and getting me ready for the next adventure.

It felt liberating to not respond immediately. To not even acknowledge, or just look at, her messages. I failed to realize how much power I had ceded to this woman that I had never met in person. Worse, I had paid this woman to take all that power from me.

Now, I was out a lot of money. I had damaged my credit score. I had damaged my reputation with my friends, family and co-workers simply on account of slowly becoming unreliable. I had damaged my marriage - perhaps beyond repair.

But at least I had gotten a little bit of my power back. That felt like a good start.

I wasn’t mad at Bella. She may have been manipulative, but she was also doing exactly what I wanted her to do - and the very thing she promised she would’ve from the very beginning.

I collapsed onto my back in the guest bed, and I stared up at the ceiling. Tomorrow was the start of the rest of my life, and everything was broken and in disarray. Nothing was going to happen without work, and I wasn’t even sure yet if I was going to put in that work. Tomorrow could find me back on the phone, waiting for Bella’s next instructions - though I wasn’t sure how she’d top this one. Would I have to rob a bank with a dirty diaper?

For the moment, I was exhausted. Completely and utterly exhausted. The truth was out there now, and my brain was free from computing lies and deceit - even if it was just for a single night. I was ready for The Big Rest.

I couldn’t wait to see what the world looked like when I woke up.