Runaway: Chapter 2 (Patreon)

Re-toilet training is fucking hard.  

The first time is easy.  The first time you don’t really know what you’re doing, and everyone around you seems to have an infinite amount of patience, and if you have an accident, it’s an “oopsie” and no one thinks any less of you.  There’s even at least one helpful grown-up with tremendously long legs willing to rush you to the nearest bathroom the second you give the slightest indication that all systems are go.  That’s toilet training.

Re-toilet training?  It’s a bitch.  You’re not cute anymore.  People don’t hide their disgust with your accidents, and don’t get me started at anyone that is willing to call themselves a grown-up to a grown-ass woman.  (By the gods, it feels good to swear, even in print.)   

Best case scenario? I got pity.  If I’m being honest with myself, I didn’t make it particularly easy on myself.  Or anyone.  

When I got out, I needed diapers.  There. I said it. I needed diapers.  I was basically incontinent.  I’d know that I’d have to go, but I’d get just a quick warning before my body started pushing on its own.  Old habits die hard, even the ones you always hated.

Thing is, I refused to wear any kind of diaper. Still do. Fuck that.  The hospital where I woke up...not that one, the one on Earth...tried to keep me in diapers.  Fuck that.  “Briefs,” they called them.  

Bullshit. 

It didn’t matter that there weren’t any cartoons on these ones.  I didn’t care that no one thought it was cute or called shitting myself “boom-booms.”  I wanted out, and I wanted everything even remotely babyish out of my life.

But after so many years, I finally loved the sounds of ripping tapes because I was the one making them.  I was ripping them off the second my hands were free and throwing them back at the nurse that insisted I wear them “for my protection.” That might have gotten me restrained and re-diapered.

Worth it.

When I got out and back onto the streets I went through a lot of underwear.  A. LOT.  Early on, it got to the point where it was easier to stay holed up on the toilet at the shelter, waiting for my undies to dry with the laundry.  

Worth it.

For practicality reasons, I had to bite the bullet and sleep with a waterproof mattress.  I just stopped wetting the bed a couple of months ago.

Worth it.

How’d I get back out on the streets?  Did I pull off a Shawshank and crawl through tunnel pipes to freedom?  Did I go like in that Jack Nicholson movie and throw a water fountain through a window and walk into the distance?  Was I just THAT good of a liar and smooth-talked my way out?

Naw. 

They let me go.  I told them the truth.  Their eyes glazed over.  They said, “that’s nice,” and after a few days they let me go.  No follow-up questions.  None of the bullshit I’d expected.

No “Tell me, did you have a troubled childhood?”  

No “Are the magic people who treated you like a baby here right now?  In this room?” 

No “Is there a history of schizophrenia in your family?”  

I might have gotten a day tacked onto my sentence for the diaper throwing incident, but that was it.  As soon as it was legally obvious that I wasn’t going to kill myself, I got kicked out.

I can’t tell people the truth and have them believe me.  I don’t know what the doctors heard when I told them my story about breastfeeding from a Fay, but it wasn’t anything worth commenting on, I guess.  Nobody commented on my ears, either.  Whatever magic that’s keeping me from warning folks is keeping me from drawing attention to myself.

Fringe benefits, I guess.

Not worth it.

People believe what they want to believe.  With or without Fay magic, that part is true.  That part is always true.  When I tell people in person, it’s “cute” or “creative.”  In person gets a pass.  In print?  I’m a liar.  I’m telling stories.  I’m a sock puppet.

I’m crazy.

I questioned it myself, if I’m being honest.  Maybe I AM some crazy bitch who just went off her meds.  Maybe I OD’d and have brain damage.  Maybe I DO just want some attention.

But that doesn’t click either.  I’ve been out, back in the Real, for a year.  I’ve taken no medications.  I self-medicate A LOT, but that’s when I feel the most normal.  The weird shit is more likely to happen when I’m sober.

What’s important is this: I remember everything since coming back.  As this year has stretched on, I’m not missing pieces in it.  

It’s nothing to brag about.  I can’t tell you what I had for dinner two weeks ago, barring holidays and special occasions.  I’m no savant.  But my memory is reliable. Functional.  Average.

Average is good.

Average is normal.

Average feels safe.

Average is how I know I’m not completely bonkers.

My time There? My time before There? That’s still a lot of swiss-cheese.  It comes back in pieces and dreams and flashbacks.  Even the parts before I get taken.  

Years and years ago when I was a kid?  Crystal clear.

This past year?  Picture is back in focus.

My entire time during and even a good chunk before? Do not pass go.  Error404.  Cannot Access.  Go cry and die mad about it, says my brain.  But then I’ll sometimes get a back door in. A stray thought, or a word or phrase that I hear or read, will randomly trigger something. 

It’s like that section of my brain has been gagged all this past year and Someone Else has been speaking for it.  Then I’ll see something on T.V. or the right song will come on at the grocery store, and then my brain will take off the gag and start shouting at me.  It tells me everything it can before a pair of ivy green hands can slap the pacifier back in.

That’s when I need to run home and write shit down.  It’s why I bought a laptop.  I don’t want to forget.  I have never forgotten any of the things I’ve suddenly remembered, but I’m afraid I might.  Maybe writing makes it real enough to remember.  Maybe reading this shit over and over again cements it.

Maybe I AM crazy.

Brain damaged.

Lying. To myself and you.

But I don’t think I am. That incomplete feeling makes me feel right.  If the weird shit my brain keeps yelling at me means anything, then there’s something They don’t want me to see.  There’s something They took away and want me to write off as crazy.  They want you to write it off as crazy, too.

And I don’t know what I forgot, but I think I know why...

I woke up to the feeling of warm sunlight on my face, the inside of my eyelids a pink fleshy red.
No clue how long I’d been out. I hadn’t  known when I’d passed out, either, so it didn’t really matter (for more reasons than one...I’ll explain later, maybe).  

It didn’t matter how long I’d been out.  I could have been passed out a hundred years and kissed by Prince Charming.  I was still drowsy.  I couldn’t help but yawn.  Yawn and click my jaw. And lick my teeth.

The feeling of my tongue rubbing on nothing but gums caused a jolt in me stronger than a double cappuccino.  Now I was awake. I was still wrapped up like a fly in a spider’s web, but I’d gone from being inside a cot to behind bars.  Crib bars, painted white, in a room the color of a summer sunset.

Not  a room. 

A nursery. 

Scaled up.  

To fit me.  

Not entirely scaled up though.  Just enough.  The crib was the size of a double, and if you’d taken the diapers out from underneath the changing table, you might expect a masseuse to man it instead of a nanny, but everything else was...normalish.

The toy chest was big enough as far as toy chests were concerned. It looked like a pirate’s chest, the gold paint labeling it “toys” shining like a doubloon, and there was even a bit of seaweed dripping off the corner.  But it wasn’t GIGANTIC.

A rocking chair opposite the crib had a high back and wide seat, like it was designed for an obese person or for two very skinny people to squeeze in tight.  Not HUGE though.  The pile of stuffed animals next to the crib had some carnival sized critters, but it had regular sized bears and monkeys too. The doorway and the closet were about normal size.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t a room with humongous furniture; just one modified to fit a very, very big baby.  A baby like me.

I’ll admit, I whimpered. I cried out.  I must’ve sounded like a rabbit with a broken leg trying to get out of a spring trap; struggling there, flopping around on a mattress made of essence of goose down and turkish delight.  Not the smartest thing, I’ll admit in hindsight, but see how smart you are when you’re tied up, still soaking in your own juices, and suddenly short thirty-two teeth.

The shadow came in first, just like it had in the white room, its eyes little pinpricks of not-dark.  I froze in the crib the second it crossed the threshold.  Something was different about it, and it took me a moment to notice and another moment to notice my noticing.  It was an almost exact silhouette of the boy I’d seen, the one that had been traveling with Her.  

Almost.

It had the same messy hair.  The same bulge of a diaper in the middle.  The same profile and slight nose.  But this time, it didn’t crawl.  One foot in front of the other, with its hands behind its back, like kids do at a museum or a store where they are not allowed to touch stuff. It walked.

It walked along the ceiling, slowly.  Carefully. (Quietly?) It looked around, looking at the furniture and then looked at me.  Eye contact with a shadow.  Not the weirdest thing that’d happened to me.

Its face went blank as it “blinked.”  Then its mouth opened into an “O,” and it slinked out.  

I embarrassed a shadow?  

The boy (a man with a serious case of babyface, really) came in after it.  He crawled, carrying something in his mouth like he was a little puppy.  He still had bits of dead leaves in his hair, but he’d changed out of the green onesie and into a set of brown jammies- the kind that cover everything from the neck down.  

They were earthy. Dark brown in spots, like fresh soil. In other places, they were light brown like tree bark. Nobody had changed me, that I could tell.  Speaking of change, there was still the bubble that bulged from his butt.  The crinkle made me think of something other than the leaves in his hair.   

Freak was diapered.  Like me.

“Hepph me!” I said.  L’s are surprisingly difficult to say when you’re used to having teeth.  My tongue slid right off the gums.  

He spit out what he had in his mouth and picked it up off the floor.  It was round and white, like a little life preserver.  It was still dripping with his spit when he shoved it through the slats of the crib and right for my face.  “Mommy Dearest said you can have this.”  

Kid hadn’t gotten up off his knees, but the crib was low enough so that we were at eye level while I was laying down.  His eyes were still that same color of sad, beautiful brown.  Full of hope.  Full of regret.  I liked those eyes.  I really liked them.  Enough that I trusted him.  Enough that I opened my toothless yap and bit down on his slimy ring.

“Sorry!” he said.  “It’s cold.  It’s always cold.”  That was not an exaggeration. No, it was an understatement.  I never got brain freeze just from biting something before. I gummed the teething ring, feeling the initial shock pass and the numbness fill up my poor empty mouth.  It wasn’t enough.  

“AAAAAAGH!”  

His hand steadied the ring; gripped it tight so I couldn’t spit it out. Fucking knives stabbed my mouth from the inside out.  “Sorry!” he said.  “Keep going!  It wouldn’t have been any better if I had warned you.”

My mouth had itched when my teeth had sunk down into my gums.  It hurt so much worse growing back in. I could taste blood mixing in and running over my tongue. The cold helped, but just a little.

I only knew it was over when the stabbing pain in my mouth got replaced with a dull headache in my brain.  I let the teething ring drop from my mouth.  I would have tried to nudge it with my nose back through the bars, but some part of me was deathly afraid that I’d lose my sense of smell to frostbite

“You okay?”

I laid there panting.  I ran my tongue over my new teeth.  They weren’t even ‘good as new’.  More like ‘good as old’.  My bottom front teeth were still a little out of whack from the time I ditched my retainer in sixth grade and didn’t tell my parents until it was too late.  

“Yeah.  It stinks.  I know.”

I caught my breath.  “WHAT THE FUN WAS THAT?!” I stopped.  I ran my sentence over again in my head.  Had I said…? “I didn’t mean to say fun.  I meant to say ‘fun.’”  The boy giggled at me. He tried to hide his smile.  “Why the fun can’t I say ‘fun?’”  Betrayed by my own mouth.

“Mommy Dearest doesn’t like her babies to say naughty words,”  he said as if that would explain anything.  “So the only F-word we can say is ‘fun.’”  He had the rough sing-song of a little kid reciting rules.  Then he looked guilty.  Almost embarrassed.  

Almost.

I frowned. “No shiny?”  He laughed again. Great.  Another word I couldn’t say.

“Nope.”

“Ding-Dong?”

“Nope.”

“What about ding-dong?”  I gasped.  “I didn’t try to say ‘ding-dong’, I meant ‘ding-dong!’  I can’t even say ding-dong?”

“Same thing as far as Mommy’s concerned.”

“Apple?”

“Nuh-uh”

“Boing?”

“Definitely not boing.”

I was hyperventilating.  Panicking.  Not controlling my bladder was one thing. Sex drive? Sure.  Plausible.  Not my proudest moment, but I’d live.  But my words?  That was fucking brain damage!  My teeth going in and out of my head was less scary to me.  

I couldn’t talk!

I couldn’t cuss!

“What the fun is this place?”

“It’s not Help,” he told me.  “But it’s close sometimes.”  He frowned again, all self-conscious.  “Sometimes it’s Heaven...if you’re good.  But most times it’s Help…’specially if you’re naughty.”  

The shadow, his shadow, slinked back in, crawling this time.  The boy turned his head to the side, as though he was listening.  That’s when I got a good look at his ears.  Pointy.  Like daggers.  Spock ears.  Elf ears.  Real, too.  Not some cheap rubber knock off you’d find in the Halloween store.  They were close enough that I could make out the little veins running through them.

His eyes got wide.  The shadow left.  

Footsteps.  Click clacking like high heels.  Or hooves.   

Brown-hair looked like he was in Jurassic Park and puddles were shaking.  “Be good,” he said.  Just be good.”  He started crawling away.  “And don’t tell Her your name.  Whatever you do, don’t tell Her your name.”  

He crawled away like there were dogs nipping at his heels.  But he didn’t quite escape.

“Peter?  Is your baby sister awake?”  Hearing Her voice did something to me.  It made my brain switch off a little bit.  It made me forget to be afraid.  I felt like a dog whose master was just about to walk through the front door.

“Yeth, Mommy Dearetht.”  The lisp was back.  I hadn’t noticed it, hadn’t remembered it until just then.  It sounded like seeing Her made him remember, too.

“Wonderful, Darling.  Is she done teething?”

“Yeth, Mommy Dearetht.”  The boy, Peter, sounded on edge.  His voice conveyed loving awe and fear at the same time.

“Wonderful, darling.  Such a good boy.  Now crawl along and play.  I’ll check and change you later. Right now I have to see to the new baby.”

“Yeth Mommy Dearetht.”

“And if I find that you’ve been good, you’ll get some biddie.”

That seemed to perk him up. “Yeth Mommy!  Thank you Mommy!”

There was silence.  I lay there in the crib, all bundled up.   Then She came in and I realized that I’d been holding my breath.  Peter might have changed a bit, but the Green Lady was as surreal and breathtaking as before.  Still with skin the color of ivy, and stiff rigid hair, she walked in like a queen surveilling her court.

She was Queen.

She was Mother.

What she wasn’t, was human.  

Her dress of jade leaves clacked and rattle against each other as she walked over to my crib and looked down on me.  I think I read somewhere that many early religions associated their god with a big bearded man living in the clouds because many people’s earliest memories of childhood was their father staring down at them from their crib.

That meant She was a Goddess.

My Goddess.

“Hello, Little One.”  In the hallway, when talking to Peter, Her voice was feminine, but deep, with a hint of sternness and fake, teasing tenderness that expected obedience.  Somewhere between Lady Tremane and Mother Gothel.  Talking to me, her voice went up almost an octave and lilted and sang sweetly.  This voice was between Snow White and Glinda.  It was fake.  It was completely fake and I didn’t care one lick.  I wanted more   “Do you know who I am?”

I copied what I’d heard from Peter. “Yeth, Mommy Dearetht.”  Her laughter was a swarm of butterflies.  Literally. The brightly colored bugs flew out of her mouth and fluttered out the window as she laughed.  The window   

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”  It was more singing than laughter.  Carefully controlled.  Fake.  And I wanted more.  “Oh, I know you don’t really talk like that,” She said.  “It’s cute when Peter does it.  But I don’t want another Peter.  I want you.”  I swooned a little at that.  It felt like I was being proposed to.  

Not Peter.

Me.

“What’s your name, Little One?”

I opened my mouth to tell her, and then saw something. Anticipation.  Hunger.  I remembered Peter’s advice.  “Alice.” I said.  “Alice.”

The smile didn’t go away from her lips, but there was a hint of let down in her yellow cats’ eyes.  “Very well, Little One.  I shall call you Alice.” More fake laughter that I mentally gobbled up.  I’d lied.  I’d lied and she knew it...

I regretted it, and then instantly forgot that regret as she reached down and ran her finger over my cheek.  “You’re special, did you know that, Alice?”  I nodded.  “Do you know why?”  I shook my head.  “You’re special because I chose you to be my baby.”

Her finger shifted to a sharp point, an icepick with a razor’s point. “And I know that wasn’t a mistake.” Slowly, painfully slowly, and infinitely delicate, she traced her finger in a straight line from my neck all the way down the middle to my toes. “Because Mommy Dearest doesn’t make mistakes.”  Right down the middle, my spider-web swaddling split open, leaving me uncovered and vulnerable.  “She corrects them.”

I swallowed.  Hard.  Her voice made my brain think I was on the best party drug of my life.  Even through a haze of Molly though, the threat was there.  “Yes, Mommy Dearest.”
“Oh, but you are a clever one!” More lilting laughter.  More butterflies. The windows opened themselves as an entire kaleidoscope filled the room.

Her cats’ eyes honed in on the soggy mass bulging out between my thighs.  Yup.  It was a diaper.  Not an adult diaper, either.  Pushing up to my elbows, I looked down at what I was wearing.  Definitely not an adult diaper. Like the crib it was adult sized, maybe, but adult diapers don’t have pictures of purple and green ponies on the front.   

The green and purple horses really stood out on the field of yellow bleeding through the white.

Ivy green hands reached between my legs and groped me.  “So Alice, are you wet?” I didn’t complain.  I should have.  But I couldn’t think to resist.  Flashbacks of the night before were playing. 

I moaned.  “Yes, Mommy Dearest.”  I wanted so desperately to thrust my hips up into Her hand.  That’d been the one thing missing from before: something to rub up against.  Something to rub off on.

She kept teasing me.  “And do big girls wet their diapers, Alice?”

“No, Mommy Dearest.”  I was panting. My limbs had finally been free for the first time in hours, but I was tensing up and curling back in on myself all over again.

“So what are you?”  I paused.  I knew what she wanted to hear.  It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.  

“What are you?”  Her tone had a hint of Gothel back in it.  “What are you?”

“A baby!”

“A what?”

I was already buzzing.  “A BABY!”

She leaned in.  Her voice like a purring cat.  “And do you know what wet babies get?”  

Any moment now and my diaper would leak and it wouldn’t be from the piss.

“TO CUM!” I shouted.  It’s what I wanted right then.  Her voice was all tension and teasing.  And I wanted release.  I’d figure out things later.  I’d appreciate how “funned” up this situation was.  I’d ask all the right questions.  Later.  Just then, I wanted more release.  “TO CUM!”

“What?”  She laughed again.  No butterflies this time.  It was a real laugh.  “No!  Of course not!”

My breath caught in my throat.  I’d gone from being more turned on that I’d ever felt in my life to feeling like my Mom and Dad had just burst into my room while I was masturbating.  Not even under the covers masturbating;  just spread eagle on the bed.  All the blood in me rushed...somewhere.  I FELT myself going pale. 

“What kind of Mommy would I be if I purposefully offered my darling babies sexual gratification?!”  My mouth went dry.  My face went red.  I was in the deepest level of shame.

Ivy green hands picked me up and dangled me by the armpits.  “No, no, no.  Babies with wet diapers get changed.”  My toes were grazing a carpet of green grass. My tits were flopping out. My diaper was drooping and smelling of piss.  I was gross.  I was wretched.  I was an untouchable. “Why would you think I’d let you cum, silly girl?” Just then, I didn’t know.

I felt foolish.

Like an idiot.

Like a child.

The weight of my diaper doubled with my embarrassment.  It slid down off my hips. Dripping.  Landing with a...a...a splot.

Yellow eyes followed it down and watched it drop. Then they traced the path up and stopped.  She looked at me.  She looked through me.  

No.  She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at my mound.

And my pits.

She pulled me closer to her, hugging me with one arm, just so she could run a finger down the crack of my ass and between my cheeks.

“But something’s wrong.”  Her tone changed.  It became deeper. Flatter.  Meaner.  More like in the hallway.  More Gothel.  More Tremane.  I felt Her hand caress my ass and sex suddenly seemed a lot less sexier.  “Someone’s been naughty…”

“Naughty?”  The word croaked out of me.

“Very naughty.  Apologize!”  Her voice, her demeanor, her everything had turned on a dime.  Motherly became Step-Motherly.  Firm became Iron.  Warmth became Ice.

“But I didn’t...I thought...I’m sorry…?”

The railing to the crib was down.  We were sitting there.  Her on the mattress, me naked on her lap. And I wanted more than anything to crawl away and hide, to not be seen. 

“Still being naughty…”

“How?”  I was shaking.  She was pushing me. Twisting me. Turning me over so that I was over her knee.

“You’re lying.  Pretending to be something you’re not.”

The lie about my name.  Alice.  It didn’t work.  “I’m…?”

“Pretending to be a big girl.  Such a naughy, naughy baby, Alice.”  

Then her hand came blazing across my backside.

I was being spanked.  

The first smack? 

This is probably the part where you’re expecting me to tell you how much it hurt.  How because of Her strength, Her swats were amplified ten-fold and I was left immediately bawling like a toddler.  

It didn’t.

I grimaced, yeah.  I flinched. 

It wasn’t pleasant.  

But it was just a slap on the ass.

ZOT!

A second after the stinging faded I felt something else.  You know that feeling when you forget something, and you know you forgot but you can’t remember what?  Like it’s on the tip of your tongue and you know that’s important, but the more you try to think of it the harder it is remember?  

Yeah.  

That’s a zot.

She spanked me again.

ZOT!

And again.

ZOT!

“But don’t worry, my precious Alice.  Mommy will correct you.”

And again and again and again…

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

I felt my brain tingling as my ass started to sting.

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

After the first few dozen spankings my hide was getting tanned. I tried to remember what had happened yesterday and I couldn’t.  What had I been wearing right before the diaper?

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

After close to a hundred my bottom was red.  It was starting to hurt. Who was missing me?  Who was in my life to miss me? Did I have a husband?  Wife? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?

“Ma’am?!” I cried out.  

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

“MOMMY?!”

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

“Yes, Alice?”  Mommy Dearest’s voice was liquid sugar again.

“How many more?”

Long spidery hands, each finger a switch, danced up my spine. “Four.”

“Four?”

“Thousand.”

ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! ZOT!

I was burning.  

Then bruised.

Then screaming.

Then bleeding.

Then crying.

Then shouting.

Then fighting.

Then crying more.

Then begging as the tears ran out.

Then laying limp.  Too exhausted.  

I didn’t know if it was blood or sweat or something else that was running down my legs, and it didn’t matter by that point.

Hours passed, they had to have.  But the sun never left its position in the bedroom window.  It took hours for my beating (and that’s what it was) to be done with, but it was still breakfast.  

And as my outsides burned up, I could feel my insides burning away.  Friends. Lovers. Enemies. Parents. Uncles. Aunts. Brothers. Sisters. Grandparents.  Fights. Fucking. Books. Movies. T.V.  Stories.  Sleepovers. Pets. Summers. Christmases.  School. College. Math. Reading. Words.  I knew I was losing things, but I was losing the words for what I was losing.  I wasn’t stupid.  I was still me.  I’d just lost...I was lost.

By the time She stopped, I was empty.  Still and empty.  

Still am empty. I still don’t have it all back.

My name. What was my name?  Alice? No!  That was a lie I had told.  But it was the only name I had left to me.  Alice.  I was Alice.  Not really?  I’d never been Alice.  But that didn’t make it any less true.

I laid there across Her lap.  Still.  Dead like a Doll.  And in the carpet that was like grass, I saw something.

Hair.

Short and wiry.  

Black and curly.  

Hair.

But not head hair.

Body hair.

Mommy Dearest had said I was naughty.  Said I was pretending to be something I wasn’t.  So I got one swat for every lie.  One swat, one zot, one lost memory for every hair that She didn’t approve of.

“Are you ready?”  She rubbed my back, Her voice soothing to my brainstem.  “Are you ready to stop pretending?”

“Yes, Mommy?”

ZOT!

I didn’t feel it on the outside.  I was all out of pain.  Still hurt on the inside.

“What was that?”

“Yes, Mommy Dearest.”

“Good girl.”  She picked me up, and for the first time laid me down on the changing table.  It burned to be on my back, but I didn’t squirm.  Too tired.  “Good baby.”

From a glass bottle, something way too fancy to be on a changing table, the Green Lady poured a purple oil on her hands.  She rubbed those purple goop-covered hands on my now hairless privates.  Wherever she touched glistened, and the pain went away.  She lifted my legs and rubbed my backside..wiped away the hurt and the damage she’d done like it was just poopie.

The pain went away.  So did the bruising.  Only the memory of them remained with the sweet scent of lavender oil.   The memories I’d lost, and the hair I’d lost with them, lay on the floor with the leaky diaper.

“All better,” Mommy Dearest said to me, her voice that gentle, loving tone again.  But I didn’t feel excited by it.  I didn’t feel love or lust just then.  No awe except dreading what she’d do next.  She slipped the new diaper under me, pulling it tight and taping it up.  “All changed.”  And I knew she wasn’t just talking about my diaper.

I…

I’m sorry.  I kind of lost it for a minute there.  I just spent the last half hour arguing with myself on whether or not to tell that story and whether or not I should just delete it and make something up.

I mean...you’re probably just reading this and thinking it’s fantasy.

Or that I’m crazy.

Or just wanting attention.

Or not real.

I just had to remind myself just now about why I’m writing this shit all down.  I...

To the people who just read this and just whacked off.  Fuck you.  My life is not for your enjoyment.

To the people who just read all this and didn’t.  Fuck you, too.  My life is STILL not for your enjoyment.

To the people who read this and believe:  Thank you.

Excuse me.  I gotta go cry now.

-Alice