After the Magic, Part 3 of 3 [Tier 2 and 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

Three

In the days that followed that first night, she had made no mention of how I rubbed her diaper while I thought she was sleeping. She might have forgotten that it happened at all–not that surprising, given everything she had been through that first day as an adult. I, too, didn’t bring it up, wondering if she just didn’t want to address it.

Instead, we focused on her recovery. In a lot of ways, she was recovering quickly. By the end of the second day, she could stand up by herself. By the end of the third day, she could take a few cautious steps by herself before needing me to help steady her. At this rate, it seemed like she’d be back to her old fighting self in no time at all.

Except, of course, for her difficulties with getting to the bathroom on time. It wasn’t like ‘potty training’ for a toddler. She wanted to use the toilet, and she had 20-years of experience in detecting the signals that would get her to a bathroom before it was too late. But she just couldn’t make it happen. By the time she knew she had to use the bathroom, she was emptying her bladder or bowels into a diaper.

I was still changing her diapers. She was getting her mobility back at a decent enough clip, but I still believed that it would be best for me to handle the diapers to ensure that she was thoroughly cleaned. She, begrudgingly, agreed. It was a little funny–to me at least–how quickly we fell into a new routine. She’d dirty her diaper, seek my help, and I’d take her to the bedroom to clean her up and get her into a fresh one.

It wasn’t unlike the routine when I was caring for her as an infant.

I tried not to talk about diapers too often. For one, they were a bit of a sore spot while Aimee struggled with her lack of continence. But, too, diapers were driving me fucking wild.

It was all I could think about. Aimee in her big diapers. Aimee, suddenly filling up her pants and needing my help. Aimee, helplessly on her back as I wiped her bottom clean.

I loved being a mother and taking care of a baby. But this was different. This was more than love. It was maternity mixed with hormones mixed with…weirdness.

I kept it to myself. I had to. There was no way that I could explain to Aimee that I wanted to keep her in diapers for the rest of her life. Even if that was, incidentally, exactly what I wanted.

***

It was close to 3 AM on the morning of Aimee’s fifth day back, and she was sleeping peacefully in the bed. It seemed right that she would be at 3 AM, but she also slept a lot in general. Between her transformation and the effort she had to put into doing the most basic tasks had left her consistently exhausted.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep. I was thumbing through pages of some of the old books we had used during our foray into black magic. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but I also knew I was lying to myself.

I hoped to find a way to keep Aimee as my diapered girlfriend forever. I was well aware of how awful that sounded–using magic to manipulate my girlfriend’s body so that I got what I wanted.

For what it was worth, I didn’t think I’d find any spells for that. And if I had, or so I told myself, I wouldn’t actually use them. I just wanted to see if it was possible.

Honestly, I was glad that I hadn’t found anything. I could swear up and down that I’d behave myself, but who knows what I would’ve done had I actually found something.

***

Two days later, Aimee and I were driving to the mall. It was her first time out of the house since her adulthood was restored. I wasn’t completely convinced that Aimee was ready for this trip just yet, but she had had enough of being cooped up in the house and needed to get out.

It was a little ironic–there was a time when going to the mall meant being exposed to hundreds of people at once. Now, it meant that there wouldn’t be too many other shoppers around.

She was still wearing diapers, a thick Ultramax was hidden under her dress. She had begun changing her own wet diapers too, much to my dismay. She wouldn’t even tell me they were wet. She’d just disappear into the bedroom or bathroom with a fresh diaper in hand, and exit a little later with a bundled up used diaper in hand.

I couldn’t be upset about it–I’d have been crazy to actually think that she’d let me change all of her diapers for the rest of her life.

But my craving for being able to care for Aimee was only increasing as she continued to make improvements in her ability to take care of herself. Sooner or later, she’d either be using the toilet again, or she’d be changing all of her own diapers. It hurt, and it was a hurt I had to keep to myself.

It felt good to just enjoy the everyday things with Aimee again. Shopping, and eating junk food at the food court–guilty pleasures that I hadn’t afforded myself since her regression. We had fallen into our old rhythm so quickly that it was as if nothing had ever changed. Occasionally, I’d catch the sound of a crinkle coming from under her dress, or she’d twist her body in a way so that the shape of her diaper was outlined through her clothes. It was only in these brief moments that the illusion of normalcy was dispelled.

Somewhere in the middle of a mostly deserted department store, as Aimee scrutinized over a new purse, I heard a familiar voice: “Don’t be fussy, Adam. We’re almost done here and then we can go home.”

It couldn’t possibly be… But it was. It was Tara, pushing little Adam in a stroller right past where we were standing. I made a half-hearted attempt at looking distracted, like I hadn’t seen her. But just as I had seen her, she had seen me. Please don’t come over. Please don’t come over.

But she had come over.

“Oh my gosh. Molly? It’s really good to see you.”

“Hey, Tara.”

We embraced. She smelled the way she had always smelled–some sort of soothing cucumber with a hint of baby powder. The Mommy Special, maybe.

“Oh, hey,” Aimee said, strolling up beside me. Damn. I was going to have to introduce Aimee to Tara. Well–reintroduce, since Tara had met her before.

“Tara,” I said, sighing a little, “I want you to meet my girlfriend, Aimee.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Aimee said, reaching out and shaking Tara’s hand.

“And Aimee,” I said next, “I want you to meet Tara. She was a good friend of mine for the last few months.”

There was a thick cloud of awkwardness around us. Tara was probably wondering why I had only introduced her as a ‘friend,’ and how I suddenly had a girlfriend that I hadn’t mentioned during my call to her just the other night. Aimee, meanwhile, could probably sense that whoever Tara was, she knew me while I had a baby.

“Aimee?” Tara said to herself. “The same name as your daughter?”

To my surprise, Aimee was quick to jump in herself: “A strange coincidence, isn’t it?”

Tara laughed. “I’d say so. Where is she today, anyway?”

“Babysitters,” Aimee said. “This is just a girl’s fun day, you know?”

Tara smiled and nodded. “I hear you. I’m about due for one of those myself. Well, I won’t keep the two of you much longer. I…think Adam might have just had an accident.” She waved a hand in front of her frowning face. I could smell it too–the familiar scent of a dirty diaper.

“It was good seeing you,” I said.

“Likewise,” she responded, nodding. “We should catch up sometime.”

“That’d be nice.”

We said our final goodbyes before Tara quickly pushed Adam away. The rank scent continued to linger around us–somehow seeming even stronger now than it had before.

“That wasn’t Adam, was it?” I asked.

Aimee blushed. “That…might have been me.”

***

I gave Aimee the option of having her diaper changed in the family restroom at the mall, or in the back of the car. She vetoed both options and insisted on going home. I could understand her desire for a familiar location for that, but it meant driving home while she continued to stew in her own juices. All the windows were down as we rocketed towards the house.

“Tell me about Tara,” Aimee said.

“I…don’t know what there is to say.”

“She’s your friend?”

“She was a friend of mine, yes.”

“But she’s not anymore?”

“It’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated about it?” she asked. “Did you have a relationship or something?”

Hole-in-one. Nail hit directly on the head. I took as long a breath as I could as I thought about how I’d respond to that.

“So that’s what it was, yeah?” Aimee asked. My silence had said far more than I meant to.

“She wasn’t a replacement for you,” I said. “She was just…there. And you–the version of you that’s in the car with me now–wasn’t.”

Aimee exhaled and turned to look out the window. I could feel her emotional pain as it radiated from her body. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything helpful to say. I let the car fall silent for a few minutes as I drove–the stench of her ruined diaper continuing to permeate despite the windows being down.

“I’m not mad at you,” she finally said, a few miles later.

“Okay,” I said, giving her plenty of space to finish her thought, if she chose to.

“I’m mad at myself. I did something stupid, and left you to clean up after me–literally–for months.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing,” I said, putting my hand on her lap. “It was an accident that the spell did what it did. I should be the one who is sorry. I missed you so much that…”

“Stop,” she said. “I don’t want to hear an apology about Tara. I’m glad she was there for you.”

“Well, I have another confession to make, then,” I said, ready to spill the beans about the weeks that had gone by where I lived my life as a mother, making little to no effort in researching how to reverse Aimee’s magic.

“I should probably confess something first,” she said.

This caught me off guard. What else could she possibly have to confess about? “Okay, go ahead.”

“I…pooped my pants,” she said.

I laughed, shaking my head. “Yeah. Believe me, I know. Is that really what you had to confess?”

“N-no. Uhm…I had to go to the bathroom for a while. Like, almost the whole time we were out.”

My head tilted a little. “But you normally don’t know that you have to go until it’s too late.”

“Right,” she said. “But, I knew. And I held it.”

“And then you…held it too long?”

“I could’ve held it longer.”

I was even more perplexed now. “I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that you willingly used your diaper?”

“My timing wasn’t great,” she said. “I didn’t realize we’d randomly run into the one woman who you spent a lot of time with while I was a baby. But…yeah.”

“But…why did you do that? If you can hold it, why did you choose to use the diaper? Especially…in public?”

Aimee bit her lip and shrugged a little–the look of someone who knew exactly why they did what they did, but wasn’t quite able to say it aloud.

“Well, I couldn’t begin to speculate,” I said. “You’ve been so adamant about not wanting to wear diapers.”

“I’ve been able to use the toilet for the last day or two,” she said. “Gradually, over the last few days, I started getting the ability to hold it longer and longer. And then…I could just hold it.”

“But…you kept using your diapers? You started changing your own diapers and…”

Aimee shook her head. “I wasn’t changing my diapers. I was using the bathroom.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you keep acting like you had to change yourself and that you had dirty diapers to throw away?” I was exasperated from all the questions I had, but I kept going. “Why the hell would you willingly mess your diaper today at the mall?”

“I saw that look in your eyes,” she said. “You probably think I didn’t see it–but everytime you change my diaper, I see it. You love taking care of me.”

“Well…guilty as charged, I guess.”

“The hardest part about getting the ability to control my body back was telling you that you didn’t have to take care of me anymore. So…I dunno. I thought I’d try and wean you off of it. Like, I’d make you think I was taking care of most of my own diapers. And then I’d have a few I’d want your help with. And then…over time…”

“There’d be less diapers for me to change,” I said, laughing to myself. The absurdity of having to be weaned off an addiction to changing my girlfriend’s diapers. “And today at the mall? Was that a little gift for me so that I still felt needed?”

“N-no,” she said, shaking her head. “Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“It took me a while to admit it to myself. But…I think…” She sighed, recomposing herself a little. “...I liked having you change my diapers. I didn’t want to like it, you know? I want to be a self-sufficient adult. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt more loved in my life than when I was on my back and you were between my legs, cleaning up the absolute most disgusting things I could put in a diaper.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, waving my hand in front of my nose, “this one ranks among your all-time worst.”

She laughed, her face turning bright red. “By the time we were in that store, it was all I could think about–how badly I wanted you to change me again. So…I did it. I loaded my diaper.”

“For me,” I said, laughing.

“For you.”

I was overwhelmed. This was not the conversation I imagined having on the drive back to the house–even in my wildest fantasies.

“You said that you had a confession to make too?” she asked.

I called a personal audible–maybe the details of my life during that seven months weren’t as important anymore. There was another confession I wanted to make instead: “I…have never been more turned on then I’ve been by seeing you–the adult you that’s sitting next to me now–in a diaper. I don’t know what it is. It seems so…wrong. But here I am, panties moist as I smell your rotten diaper. I feel like I’m going insane.”

Aimee laughed–cackled really. Her laughter proved contagious, and I had contracted it myself. We tore down the highway, tears in our eyes as we howled at the absurd turns our lives had taken over the last few months.

“Man, we’re fucked up,” Aimee said at last.

I shrugged. “Well, it’s all out there now. What are we going to do about it?”

“You’re going to change my diaper when we get home, right?”

“Obviously.”

“How much longer until we’re home?”

“Ten minutes, about. Why?”

“So, that gives me a little bit of time,” she said as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You keep your eyes on the road.”

I watched out of my periphery as she grabbed the hem of her dress with both hands and hiked it up her thighs and past her swollen diaper–once white, but now a muddied yellow color.

“What are you doing?” I asked again.

“I’ve spent so much time thinking about how I either didn’t want to wear diapers because I was an adult–or how I wanted to wear diapers to please you. I never really stopped to think if I just liked diapers for myself.”

“And you’re going to, what, inspect them yourself now and see?”

“I’m going to, uhhh, try a little…something.” Her hand had cupped the front of her diaper as she spoke, and she gave it a little squeeze, forcing that little moan from her mouth.

“N-no,” I said. “Are you really going to feel up your dirty diaper while I’m driving?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because I want to see you do that!” I exclaimed. “And if I watch you as intently as I want to watch you, this car is going off the first cliff we come to.”

“What if I pull over?”

“Do whatever you, ohh, want. I’m not going to, uhhh, stop what I’m doing.”

We took a little detour into the quiet corner of a nearby parking lot. I didn’t interfere or involve myself. I simply watched as she squeezed and rubbed at her soiled diaper. When it seemed like she had sufficiently explored the outside of it, her hand disappeared into the front of the bloated padding. The motherly part of myself wanted so badly to pull her hand out of the diaper so I could clean it off and disinfect it–but I showed restraint and let her do what she wanted to do.

I couldn’t see what was happening inside the diaper, but based on the noises she made and the looks on her face, I felt that I could guess pretty accurately.

“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck…fuck…going to…uhhhhhghhh…”

I gave her a few moments before following up on our conversation: “Well? What do you think of your diapers?”

“I think they’re…good,” she said. “Very good.”

“You smell awful.”

She nodded.

“Let’s get you home. I can clean you up.”

She nodded again. “But…you’ll put me in another diaper, right?”

“Obviously.”

***

“So…what the hell is this place?” Aimee asked, looking up at the sign that hung above the storefront. “Bottom’s Up?”

“You’re going to love it,” I said.

In the days since our mall trip and ensuing antics in the car–of which my car still smelled of a soiled diaper–we entered a new chapter of our relationship. Sex was back and better than ever. And while Aimee had the ability to use the toilet if she wanted to–more often than not, she didn’t.

Needless to say, we were going through a lot of diapers and needed more.

“Hey,” a man behind the counter said as we entered. His eyes lit up a little seeing us walk in. I wondered how rare of an occurrence it was that two young women walked into his store together. “Can I, uh, help you two with anything?”

Truthfully, I was a little disappointed that the girl who was working here the last time wasn’t behind the counter instead.

“I think we’re just going to look around,” I said. “Thanks.”

“What the hell is this place?” Aimee asked again, her mouth agape as she picked up an oversized onesie with a cute repeating print of yellow and pink hearts on it.

“A dream come true,” I said.

“Is it bad that I want everything?” asked Aimee.

“That’s not a bad thing at all,” the man said from behind the counter. “Do you want me to start ringing it all up? Because I’ll do it.”

“Actually,” I said to him. “I was in your store a week ago and spoke to a young woman. Effie, I think her name was? Does she happen to be working today?”

The man sighed, looking a little deflated. “Really? Yeah, I guess she’s here. Hold on.” He turned and wandered through a door into a stockroom, muttering to himself about how he’s the owner and yet nobody ever comes into the store looking for him.

“Effie?” asked Aimee. “Another friend you met over the last few months?”

“She’s a new addition to our life,” I said.

“Well well,” a new voice said as the door swung open from the stockroom. “I wasn’t sure that I’d see you again so soon. And is this the girlfriend you were buying diapers for?”

Aimee’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of magenta.

“One and the same,” I said, smiling.

“I have to admit,” Effie said. “When you were here last, buying all those diapers, I didn’t believe that you had a girlfriend. I thought, for sure, you were buying them for yourself.”

I laughed and shrugged as I pointed to the blushing Aimee. “What can I say? She’s the baby.”

“Sometimes literally,” Aimee mumbled.

“Now that I see her,” Effie said, “it makes sense. She looks a lot more like a baby than you do.”

“Hey…” Aimee said, frowning. “Is this how you talk to all your customers?”

“You should see how my boss talks to customers. Anyways. You bought, like, a few packs of diapers last week. You didn’t actually use them all already did you?”

Aimee and I shared a knowing glance and I giggled a little. “It’s possible.”

“We have a rewards club now,” Effie said. “It was my idea. For every 10 packs of diapers you buy, you get one free. So…you should probably stock up.”

“We need more than diapers,” I said.

Effie nodded excitedly. “Yeah? What else do you need?”

“Just about…everything.”

***

The cost of stocking the new nursery was mitigated by selling the infant-sized items we no longer needed. But, it was decided, we needed a nursery.

As much as I loved the old nursery–as much as I loved the part of my life when I needed it–it paled in comparison to what was coming. Aimee and I seemed closer than we had ever been before, and the silly awkwardness of our transition to more maternal and infantile roles lessened with each passing day.

We talked about her going back to work, but when we did the math, it didn’t seem to be that pressing of a need. I had managed to keep us afloat just fine while she had been regressed, and with a promotion looming with my job, I was feeling confident that there was nothing to worry about.

“Where did you want to put the Diaper Genie?” asked Effie.

“Maybe over there?” I said, pointing to the corner near where Aimee was stocking the diaper shelf full of big diapers of various styles and designs.

We had taken more than just merchandise home with us from Bottoms Up–we had acquired ourselves an Effie. She was our guide and guru, helping to usher in the next stage of Aimee and I’s life together.

“You don’t wear diapers?” Aimee asked Effie.

Effie laughed awkwardly, her cheeks turning a little pink. “No. Well…not often. Sometimes. It’s…complicated.”

“You’d be in good company if you wanted to wear one here,” I said. “I’m a bit of a diaper changing expert these days.”

“Noted,” Effie said, laughing again. “And I suppose you’d have to be good at changing diapers if you went through all the ones you bought the first time you came to the store.”

“You should’ve seen all the diapers we went through before she came to your store,” Aimee said, flashing a knowing grin in my direction. It was a surprisingly cheeky comment, considering that it was the sort of thing that would be hard to elaborate on if Effie had any follow-up questions.

“Ah, so you’ve changed a lot of diapers,” Effie said, laughing. “You know…when you came into the store the first time, do you remember what you said to me?”

Aimee’s head turned and stared at me as well. “Yeah, Molly. What did you say to Effie?”

I wasn’t entirely sure what I had said, but I was starting to think back on my first visit to the shop. “You’ll have to refresh my memory.”

“You promised me that if you went through all the diapers you were buying, and then you came back to the store for more, you’d tell me more about the hows and whys of keeping your girlfriend in diapers.”

“She said that, did she?” Aimee asked, giggling a little. “I, too, would love to hear about that.”

I saw no reason not to start with the truth, as insane as it sounded. “Would you believe me if I told you it was because of magic?”

“Not really,” Effie said, shrugging.

Aimee seemed to think that response was rather amusing.

“I guess…I just like it when my girlfriend needs me. Like, really needs me. Needs me so badly that she can’t even wipe her own butt.”

Another giggle from Aimee.

Effie nodded, seeming to accept that answer. “Well she’s a good girlfriend if she’s just willing to let you treat her like a baby.”

Another implied wink is exchanged between Aimee and I when I glance in her direction.

“She wasn’t kidding,” Aimee said. “It was magic.”

Effie laughed and shrugged, as if playing along with some sort of in-joke that didn’t exist. Someday, I hoped, we’d find a way to make her believe that answer.

***

It was the smell, of all things, that tipped me off. And, for once, it wasn’t the scent of one of Aimee's dirty diapers.

It smelled old and musty–that unmistakable scent of aged paper that came from cracking open some old books. And in my experience, old books in this home usually meant trouble. Sure enough, one of those antiqued books on magic was sitting on the desk in the bedroom, left open to have its ancient odor emanate throughout the room. Why we kept these damn things around was beyond me–perhaps, with our efforts to complete the nursery, we just hadn’t yet thought to toss them in a dumpster.

It was a book I recognized rather well–quite possibly the volume that got us into, and later out of, the seven-month mess we had been in. It wasn’t the only book to blame, of course–Aimee had cobbled together her own magic using bits and pieces of spells she had learned about in a number of books. But the real meat of her spell had come from this book–specifically, a little number called, fittingly enough, “Age’s Lament.”

Wouldn’t you know, the book was open to that exact spell once more.

And maybe one could make a case for the idea that she was just casually reading magic books. Reminiscing about spells of days past, perhaps. But it was the item next to the book that concerned me even more. It was a framed photo of me, holding a tiny baby swaddled in a pink blanket.

The photo had been taken a few months ago. I was hesitant to take the picture in the first place–let alone print it and frame it. But there was something about the looks on our faces that I always found to be enchanting. The look of pure love on my face, and the look of comfort on Aimee’s.

I had hid away the picture shortly before completing the spell that had restored Aimee to her adult-form. I told myself I should throw away the picture, but instead I had just stashed it under the bed–where, apparently, it had been found. Seeing the photo now, next to this book–it made me nervous.

“Dammit, Aimee,” I said aloud. “You can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

My instinct was to hunt down that diaper-wetting magician and to give her a few choice words. I’d remind her of how careless it was for us to be playing with forces we didn’t completely understand. I’d remind her of what happened the last time she cast one of her spells. I’d explain how unfair it was to just expect me to be there to take care of her when something, inevitably, went awry.

Instead, I made myself a hot cup of tea and sat outside for a little bit, flipping through the pages of one of the old tomes. I could remember when the concept of magic was exciting to me. It hadn’t been all that long ago, and yet it felt like it had been eons. Too, I had sworn that I was done with magic by the time I actually managed to find a sequence of spells that would reverse the regression Aimee had inflicted upon herself.

I didn’t want it to come down to this, but I decided that I needed to have a long rational chat with Aimee. We had a strange life now, with all of our diapers and baby things. It didn’t need to be made stranger with magic. If we were going to live our lives together, she’d need to get rid of the books and promise not to cast any more spells.

***

“I don’t like the look on your face,” Aimee said as she sat down in the living room with me.

I was seated on the loveseat, and she had flopped down onto the ground, a crinkling poof erupting from her bottom as she did. She had taken to sitting on the floor a lot lately–it was nothing I had ever asked her to do, though I found it to be a cute habit. It seemed appropriate for someone wearing such thick diapers.

“I just wanted to chat,” I said.

“Chat about what?”

“You. Me. Magic.”

“Magic?” she said, her lips nervously quivering. “What about it?”

“Are you still…interested in magic? Casting spells?”

“Well…I guess.”

“I found one of the books in the bedroom yesterday. Opened to the page about ‘Age’s Lament.’  I really hoped that I didn’t have to have this conversation with you, but…are you planning on casting that spell of yours again? The same one that you messed up the last time so that you turned into a literal infant? Because I love you, and I want to support you, but if you’re just going to keep doing these reckless things to yourself without any regard for me…”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“No?”

“I…have lots of regard for you. All of the regard, actually.”

“Aren’t you happy with where things are now?” I asked. “The nursery? The diapers? I thought this was good. I thought we wanted this. Together.”

“We did,” she said. “We do.”

“What are you doing with the magic, then?”

She sighed. “I…I wasn’t going to cast the same spell I did last time.’

“Don’t you think that any spell at all, no matter what it does, is pretty dangerous? Especially if you’ve never cast it before? You already turned yourself into a baby. What happens if you turn yourself into a…goat?”

“You could milk me,” she said, smiling a little. “Make cheese from it.”

“You’re the worst. What spell were you going to cast?”

“I…well…”

“Go on,” I said. “Tell Mommy.”

I immediately blushed a little, having not expected myself to say that. She was blushing a little too.

“Mommy?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she wasn’t calling me by that name–but trying to confirm if that was a name we were going to start using.

The cat was out of the bag, and given the choice of letting it just roam outside the bag or stuffing it back in again, the former seemed easier. “That’s right. I’m your Mommy. What else would you call someone who changes your diapers?”

She blushed, nodding.

“So? Tell Mommy about this supposed spell of yours you wanted to cast.”

“It’s…already done.”

I shook my head, a little confused. “What do you mean?”

“I already cast it.”

“When?”

“An hour or two ago.”

“But…what did you do, Aimee?”

She took a deep breath before walking over to the desk and grabbing a slip of paper from under a book. She carried it back to me and put it into my hands.

“Keep this,” she said. “But don’t read it aloud yet.”

“Why not?” I asked.

I took a look at the words written on the slip of paper. There were two lines of text. The first: “Aimee is a good baby.” The second: “It’s time to grow up now.”

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“When you–specifically you–say those words aloud, you’re activating the spell. Or…turning it off. You have all the control.”

“But what spell did you cast? What do these phrases actually do?”

“Well, if everything works the way that it should…”

“You don’t even know if the spell works or not?”

She laughed, the playfully aloof giggle of a toddler who had just flushed her mother’s keys down the toilet without considering the consequences. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“What is supposed to happen?” I asked.

“I was thinking about what it must’ve been like when I was a baby, I guess. And while we both know that it was a mistake…you still came into your own as a mommy. I know you miss it.”

“Well… Yeah, I guess. But it’s not like I’d trade in the adult-you for an infant again.”

“I know,” she said, her cheeks starting to get a little more pink. “Of all the regrets I have about that spell, do you know what’s bugged me the most?”

I shook my head.

“I wished that I got to experience you being an incredible mommy. I mean, sure, I was there–but not really. I have no real memories of that time, just vague…feelings.”

“So what is this spell of yours?” I asked, wondering if we were getting off topic.

“Oh, right. So…if everything goes the way that it should…”

“And that’s a big if.”

“...when you say the first phrase, I should lose all adult control of my body. Like…I’m not going to shrink, and I’ll still have my adult consciousness. But I’ll have the muscle control of a toddler. I won’t be able to walk. I’ll barely be able to crawl. I’ll certainly have no control over my…”

“So you’d need diapers,” I said, feeling my lips curl into a little smile.

“Right. But…that also sounds like work. Which is why there’s an ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch, of sorts. So if you want to deal with a helpless baby again…you can. But only when you want to.”

“And, this time, you’ll actually be coming along for the ride?”

She nodded.

“I really didn’t want to fuck around with magic again,” I said, trying my hardest to get a stern-mother look to overwrite my goofy grin. I was pretty sure it wasn’t happening. “But…I like the idea of this.”

“Just try it,” she said.

“What if it doesn’t work the way you thought it would?”

She shrugged. “We’ll figure it out, right?”

I laughed. “You mean that I’ll figure it out?”

“Same thing.”

“Yeah…alright. Here we go. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Aimee is a good baby.”

***

Excerpt from Aimee’s journal:

It feels like a dream, at first. Except it’s not like any dream I’ve ever had before.

I’m there, but I’m just a passenger. I can see and hear everything that’s happening around me. If something touches my skin, I feel it. If I try really hard, I can maybe move my head a little. Sometimes I can make my hands into fists or wiggle my feet some. Otherwise, I’m just there. A body.

And when I’m feeling like this, I almost always see her smiling face hovering above me. She takes care of me, and it's a bliss unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. And I can see that same bliss in her eyes.

And later, when it feels like we’ve both gotten what we wanted, she says one final thing to me: “It’s time to grow up now.”