Run Away: Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Runaway: Chapter 7

 New update:  I’m going to Church again.  Denomination?  All of them.  Friday I sit in on a Mosque, Saturday I travel to Temple, Sunday I attend Mass.  Wednesday is old fashioned Baptist Revival time, and I’m trying some Bhuddist meditation practices this month from stuff I found online.  I’m going to A.A. meetings on Tuesdays, just in case all that “Higher Power” Bullshit works.  Hmmm...calling it bullshit is probably not a great start if I’m being honest.

A couple of Mormons caught me at my door the other day: A couple of nineteen year olds who called themselves “Elder”.   I invited them in and they seemed genuinely confused.  “We’ve never gotten this far, before,” one of them told me.  They smelled of cinnamon apple cider and static cling dryer sheets.  Great. Proselytizers with social anxiety.

Still working on finding an outlet for Hinduism, but I’m hopeful.  Anybody out there Wiccans by any chance?

I’m trying to find God.  Literally.  The Fay are gods, themselves. Time, perception, and physics are Their bitches.  Metaphor is literal and generalizations can be exact units of measurement for Them.  The absurd and theoretical isn’t even a science to Them: “Science” conjures up images of calculations and forethought...effort.  

But from what I can remember, very little effort is involved, or at least shown.  Everything is as simple as wanting something and getting it for themselves.  Real change the channel, stuff.  There’s no “science” to seeing what’s on Netflix and bingeing all of the episodes of Word Party. People just do it. Likewise there’s no real science for Them when it comes to altering a person’s mind, body, and soul.  Our identities are play-doh, I’m convinced.

Fuck.  Shitty choice of words. I just read what I typed and for some reason I can’t go back and edit it.  I’m getting worse.  Little by little.  People at work are offering to give me rides home and walk me to the bus stop even if the sun is still up.  And everytime, they gesture to the back seat of their car or offer out their hand for me to take hold of.  

I hear myself utter out a “No thank you,” and I have to suppress the urge to remind them that I’m an adult, knowing that doing so could very well have the opposite effect.  Sometimes, when I walk in the breakroom at work, people get quiet.  Or they abruptly, obviously, change the topic; start talking about Disney Movies or funny memes they saw.  They always make sure to show me something funny they found on their phones. And they always look a little uncomfortable, like I’m interrupting something.

At first I thought they were talking about me, but when I listened in through the door, I heard something else. They’d been talking politics.  The News. Swearing about asshole customers who didn’t know what they wanted and treated them like less than human beings.  Grown up stuff.  I try to contribute, but all I get is condescending smiles, or perplexed amazement: Real “wisdom from the mouth of babes” type stuff.  I can’t even complain about customers in the same way, because I don’t have much to complain about.  The kids and their parents are super nice to me, and I know it’s not my fault.

I need religion if for no other reason than I need to be around people who haven’t been around me long enough to put the kid gloves on.  

Thank the gods that no one has suggested I go to the youth group meeting or wherever the kiddies go away from the adults.

Thank the gods I can still type.  

The power of the Fay is strong.  Strong, but not infinite.  The magic that I remember Mommy Dearest wielding always seemed to have some kind of rules or limitations.  Reading over my other entries, She bought a literal lifetime of diapers for me.  I’m not going to begin to unpack how “lifetime” could be measured, but upon reflection she did have to buy them.  Deals have to be made.  Things can be taken, but some things have to be given. 

Like True names. 

Mommy’s magic was powerful.  But it had limitations.  

Deals.

Contracts. 

Covenants.

Routines.

Rituals.

From a certain angle, that’s religion, isn’t it?  People meet. We invoke and chant and sing, hoping that someone we can’t see is hearing us.  We burn candles and tell stories and make offerings and sacrifices.  We talk of rules that we have to follow in order to make the person we can’t see happy.  

And if we’re bad we get punished in ways that we can’t rationally comprehend. Pain that the human mind can’t possibly envision but only describe in metaphors of fire and doom.  But if we’re good we get rewarded with bliss beyond description. In some cases just being in the presence of said deity is supposed to be reward enough?

Sound familiar? Because it should.

That’s why I’m getting in tune with my “spiritual side”.  What if God or gods or whatever are just all Fay that made a very favorable, very binding deal with the people who worshipped Them?  What if Fay are fallen gods or wayward angels; divine beings that are still bound by old rules even though they’ve gotten out of the worship game and are majorly into the abduction racket? What if the Land Beyond the Real is just a pocket neighborhood in some kind of afterlife?  What if Heaven and Hell were just bits of the Land that I never got to visit?

So many questions.  So many questions that I can’t find answers to.  I feel like I have more information and more secrets than anyone else out there currently alive, but that information is only leading to more questions and dead ends.

What am I?  What am I turning into?  What have I been through?  What’s going to happen to me?!

I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH!  AND FUCK, I’M CRYING OUT OF FRUSTRATION AGAIN! I SHOULDN’T BE CRYING THIS MUCH!  I’M SUPPOSED TO BE STRONGER THAN THIS! AREN’T I?

I wasn’t even supposed to be a Cry Baby.  My tears aren’t sweet and they don’t cause brief bouts of euphoria to people who taste them.  I don’t need kisses to stop crying, and I’m perfectly fine and able to function even when I’m extremely upset.  I’m typing this all up even though it’s getting harder and harder to read the words on the screen.  My fists aren’t even balled up!

Oh.  

Oh.

I might have gotten ahead of myself, this time.  Let me start over:  The Fay are not like Real parents.  (“No shit, Alice,” I can practically hear you saying from your side of the screen.)

I’m not talking about biology, I’m talking about culture and methods.  When you were born, you had a little bit of DNA that helped determine who you would become in life.  Then your parents- whether or not they were the ones who gave you that DNA is irrelevant- hopefully did their best to teach you stuff.  

Maybe it was good stuff like “Treat others the way you want them to treat you,” or “Don’t be a total asshole”.  It might have been not so good stuff like “I’ll give you five dollars if you don’t tell your mother about my new friend you saw me playing with,” or “You get your ass whupped if you talk back to me.”  Point is, most parents try to deliberately teach you SOMETHING!

Then mix it up with the stuff that you LEARN from them, especially the stuff they didn’t mean to teach you, like that you get attention when Mommy accidentally steps on your toy and she’s SO SORRY that she broke it. Or that smoking can’t be THAT bad for you since Mommy still sneaks them when Daddy isn’t home.  Stir it up and let it bake for 15-20 years at 98.5 degrees, and then you get a recipe that makes an entire person.

You might end up being the type of person that your parents wanted you to be; you might be nowhere close to what they expected.  Everybody is baking blind in the long run, only occasionally taking tastes to figure out if something is missing or more is needed.  But no matter what, you’re still a person and your recipe is made up of the ingredients and conditions that were given to you.   

It’s a psychological chemical change.  Your cake is baked and everyone has to eat you, too; even if they’re not big fans.  Barring incarceration, most parents gotta take a big ol’ bite of what they helped cook.

Not Fay, though.  Chemical change doesn’t mean anything to Them.  I have faint memories of Pre-made cake being popped into a reverse-oven and coming out as batter just so Peter and I could lick the spoons.  It tasted of pride, accomplishment and addiction...and I felt like I’d helped for some reason despite all evidence to the contrary.

Psychological change is nothing to them.  If a Fay wants you to be Their baby, you WILL be Their baby.  They’ll strip away every part of you that doesn’t fit Their image of what you should be to Them.  What They can’t strip away, They’ll suppress.  What They can’t suppress, They’ll just punish it out of you until you get with the program; and that’s if you’re lucky.  

And then They’ll add Their own special brand of preservatives and artificial flavoring, until you’re not you anymore, but just exactly the perfect “baby” that they want you to be.  It’s awful. It’s criminal.  It’s dehumanizing in the most literal sense is what it is.

I started these patterns- the treatment and methods as well as Their limitations- after Mommy Dearest took us to daycare. (Special sarcastic emphasis on the “day” aspect.) I can’t think of a place over There that demonstrated more completely the Fay’s very loose relationship with time than the daycare. 

There was a nap room that was a perpetual starry night and crickets forever singing in the distance.  Every meal and snack was served in a perpetuity in a different area or room.  Gods help you if one of the Keepers in charge of your care said they’d change you in “a few minutes”.

It was all times and no times all at once at daycare.  The length varied greatly, too.  Sometimes The Green Lady would drop us off at that strange place, slam the double doors behind her, and just as Peter and I were being unbuckled from our stroller and having our diapers checked, they would open and Mommy Dearest would be back to collect us.  Once, I swear, Peter and I were there for close to a month; all but abandoned I’d thought.  

Why did a nearly omnipotent being need to leave us in the care of other nearly omnipotent beings?  Fuck all if I know.  Honestly, I don’t think she needed to, as much as it’s what she did.  Words like “need” imply some negative consequence based on cause and effect. A plant needs sunlight.  An animal needs food.

Parents need someone else to watch their kids or else they can’t go out and make money to feed those kids.  But Mommy Dearest somehow had bought a literal lifetime supply of food and diapers for Peter and me. As far as I can remember, she didn’t need anything to help take care of us, and her madhouse of a home could have very well have contained us in any kind of absence.  The Green Lady didn’t lack any resources that we could detect.  She didn’t need anything.

Water, in contrast, doesn’t need to take the shape of its container. Need doesn’t factor into it. Water just does it.  It’s not a matter of want or need or instinct; shifting and sloshing around is just what water tends to do.  I think Mommy Dearest and Her ken might have been something like water.  They left Their kidnapped and babied humans in the care of Others because some unwritten law that even Isaac Newton couldn’t deduce said that They must.

It’s just what Mommy Dearest did.

Water freezes and melts and mists depending on the heat.  Doesn’t matter how water feels on the subject.  It’s just what happens.  #Sorrynotsorrywater.  Just like water, some things even the Fay had to obey.

Like travel routes.  Mommy Dearest took us many places, but daycare and Her home were the most common and it’s reflecting on that that allows me to see the limitations of the Fay.  Every trip She took us on was always a straight line right out Her door. But the bizarre dreamscape landmarks, the little freakshows, background gags, and jumpscares changed depending on where we were being taken.  

Geography had no rhyme or reason.  Psycho-geography though.  There’s rules to that.  

The route to daycare always involved a singing clown crying tears of blood, the funeral dirge played on kazoo just buzzing out of the air, and a sewer tunnel decked out with neon Christmas lights and the words “Tunnel of Love” spray painted on the entrance.  Always.  Every. Single. Time.  After the second or third time, I didn’t need to ask Her or Peter where we were going.  

It’s like we were being pushed through lingering dreams and trains of thoughts made solid or hypnotic suggestions turned flesh.


It might be the first thing that I can really remember making sense in my memory of There, (if a cartoon Bugs Bunny being roasted on a spit by a very flesh and blood Elmer Fudd makes sense).  After the tunnel, the dark nothing of the Land would give way and a walkway leading to a building would warp in under the stroller’s wheels.  Tall, not quite overgrown, lavender grass sprouted up on either side, and new cracks were constantly forming and healing themselves under our weight with every pass.  The building looked like a house, like Mommy Dearest’s house, but different….shit that sucks….I can do better.

How do I put this?  Have you ever seen a literal home business; a building that from all the entrances and structures and aesthetics appears to have been designed by the architect to be a standard living residence?  But then, either Hubby gets an idea to open an accounting firm out of the family room, or rezoning happens?  So you get a bunch of business signs posted, and not-so-homey coats of paint.  It’s officially a business, but someone definitely used to live here, and nothing that anyone does to the outside is ever going to shake that feeling.

That’s what daycare was like.

The first time the double adult stroller rolled up the walkway, I could have sworn that we’d walked in a kind of circle.  It almost looked like Mommy Dearest’s house.  Same basic structure, but with different, rainbow colored bricks instead of the cat’s-eye-yellow, and there were no vines creeping down over the walls.  The Green Lady’s home didn’t have a yard, either. A picket sign on a purple lawn that said “daycare”, no capital letters and for some reason I still can’t think of it as a proper noun.  

Appropriate, yeah?  Everything was little.

 Hanging from the front porch were bits of kiddie artwork; stick figures portrait of families; the kind of poor paintings that end up on the refrigerator or hung from preschool windows.  Mostly crayon and I wanna say finger painting stuff.  Something a two to three year old (tops) would think was beautiful.  A non-existent gust wafted, revealing the names on the back of these “messterpieces”:  Names like “Johnny” and “Susie” and “Bridget” and “Mikey”, only there weren’t quotations around them.

The first time we showed up, Peter elbowed me lightly and made the sign of the cross as we were pushed past the bits of kinder-art.  I followed his lead and did the same.  There were no drawings by “Peter”.  I felt a chill wash over me, like passing through a graveyard.

 Appropriate, I think. This place?  This daycare? No one ever told me this much, but I get the feeling that it was the repurposed corpse of some Fay’s home that had been gutted and converted into an eternal nursery.  Just writing that gives me a kind of grim tingle.  In some way, I take it to mean that Fay can lose something….it might just mean that the original Owner upgraded and gave the scraps away.

Who knows?  Moving on.

The door would always open inward of its own accord, and we’d pass through a beam of sunshine, just bright enough to make you have to shut your eyes.  And when we opened them, we were at daycare. 

A main area that looked disturbingly like it might have been a living room and greeting area before a few walls were knocked out to open the space was the first thing to greet us each time.  The paint on the walls had lost some of its luster and there was an ever present smell of powder and piss that never quite went away, no matter how used you got to it.  Screams of “No more!  No more!”  came from one of kitchens in the back where “babies” were force fed until they the Keepers decided they were “done”.

Walls were covered with childish posters, like a runic alphabet that stretched from the top of ceiling and spilling out past the floor; or cute little sayings like “Memento Mori” done in cross stitch alphabet blocks; or three little monkeys with the words “Sleep. Obey. Submit.,” written under them.

(Y’know.  The usual kid stuff.)

After we’d cleared the blinding sunlight, the doors would close behind us and we’d be at a thick oak desk with a heavy book lying right in front of the stroller.  It was an in and out log of sorts, I think.

The Green Lady would leave the stroller long enough to pick up a quill straight out of the air, and sign our names into the tome. The first time She signed us in, I managed to see Her putting quotation marks around the names. “Alice” and “Peter”.  Not my name; not my True name, but it was all She had.  

Then the ritual would continue with the slamming of the book, and a puff of smoke, revealing a Keeper as the gray and black stuff dissipated. As near as I can tell, Keepers are Fay. Just...different.  Off.  Wyrd. Lesser.

Every other Fay that I can remember seeing was bright and colorful.  The Green Lady.  The Blue Maiden.  The Red Death. All the so-called mommies and daddies were peacocky as all get out.  Even the ones that were flesh colored, or dark skinned had a kind of uncanny valley brightness to them.  It was the difference between a movie filmed in color and one in technicolor.  

Not the Keepers at daycare.  They were always the same grayish blackish color of their smoke.  I can never remember them walking.  They’d just poof from place to place, their two bare feet planting wherever they appeared.  Even when they weren’t puffing out of thin air to offer a toy or catch you misbehaving, a light odorless (thank gods) mist drifted off their backs.  

Black, wet, stringy hair always hung in their face, and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they didn’t actually have eyes.  The Things that ran daycare varied in shapes and sizes, but were always naked and pregnant.  Tall or short, otherwise skinny or fat, they all had bulging baby bump bellies that if you looked too closely you could see hints of limbs and faces pressing up against them from the inside.  The faces were always screaming. Always screaming.  

Always.

If you’re thinking that meant that all the Keepers presented as female, you’d be wrong.  I can’t figure out something so complex as gender among the Fay, but yeah. Lots of penises.  Lots of vaginas.  Tits too.  Some had the anatomy of ken and barbie dolls.  Didn’t matter.  All had tha swollen hump up front filled with screaming faces.

And I don’t think They were pregnant.

They’d make a little half bow to the Green Lady and She’d wheel us around past the desk, and we’d get checked in.  I’ve heard the exchange so many times I can still hear it in my nightmares.

“Greetings, Green Lady,” the Fay who appeared from the smoke would say.  “Do you bring us charges to protect?”  No matter which Keeper it was, They always spoke to the Green Lady in a low, raspy whisper, like an asthmatic with a chicken bone caught in its throat.

Mommy would speak in the cold flat monotone that She used when talking to other Fay and Gaubs.  “I do, Keeper. Until I return for them.”

“Do they know The Ways?”

“I trust you to teach them if they do not, and to remind them if they forget.”

“May we care for them?”

“You may.”

“May we love them?”

“Only insomuch that you do not offend me in the act of love.”

“May we punish them?”

“I will have recompense if you do.”

Then the Keeper Fay would extend their hand out.  “Done.”

“And cannot be undone until my return.”   Mommy Dearest would shake hands with the thing at the door, and leave us.  Always the same.  

No goodbyes.  

None of the butterfly laughs or lilting voice that made my brain turn to happy mush and shake with ecstacy.  We ceased to exist to Her the moment the ritual was complete.  It was Her way.  I’d say She did it to spare us any parting pain, but that’s giving the Green Lady too much credit.

Once She was gone, a Keeper would poof up next to us and do Its own kind ritual.  It would lean over and unbuckle us from the stroller.   “Why hello, my little ones,” it would say in a completely different voice.  It sounded like a chirpy, syrupy sweet mother right out of T.V.;  much like Mommy Dearest when She was on Her A game.  “We’re going to have a wonderful time together.”

Only the Keepers never smiled. Ever.  And they all had the same voice.  No expressions.  Just robots going through the motions, and They never made me reel with joy or terror.  Less perfect versions of the Green Lady.  Not quite Mommies.  Lesser Fay confined to a caste identity.

“Hello Peter,” the Keeper said the first time there.  “It’s so nice to see you again.”  Peter kept his mouth shut and hid his face, faking a giggle like he was an excited or embarrassed Toddler.  Peter was good at faking it.  It slipped two fingers into the cuff of his diaper.  “Uh-oh,” it said.  “You’re wet.” A pause for consideration, (or processing)  “But not too wet.  I’ll change you a little later.  You’re fine now.”

Tendrils of smoke carried Peter through the air towards a dutch door engraved with eldritch runes.  Another Keeper was waiting on the other side for him.  The first Keeper turned its attention to me.  “And you must be Alice.  It’s wonderful to have you here with us Alice.”  Such nice comforting words coming out of a blank slate for a face.  It was the T-1000 impersonating John Connor’s step mom.  

It lifted up my polka dotted mushroom dress and checked me the same way it’d checked Peter.  “Dry,” it said. You’d be surprised how quickly you can get used to such casual violations. “But you’re so little.  We’ll have to get you a bottle.  Make sure you stay hydrated.”

Black  smoke lifted me up on a cloud and carried me over to the dutch doors.  Apparently it wasn’t my turn to be in the main play area.  A second Keeper was there to receive me as I was levitated over the top half of the door.  I was soon on the floor, smoothing my dress out over my diaper as best I could, and checking to see if these Things left smudges or marks.  They didn’t.

“Drink up, Alice,” the new Keeper said, handing me a bottle “It’s good for you.” I looked at the bottle in my hands, it was filled with a clear liquid.  I can’t say that the Keeper who gave it to me showed any kind of expectancy, but it was staring. “Go on,” it said in that exact same motherly voice as the one before it had.  “Drink up, baby girl.”

I looked up and past the Keeper towards the gap I’d been handed over in.   Standing wasn’t an option, I knew.  Something Mommy fed me kept me crawling and I was in no mood to find out if it wore off.  The bottom half of the dutch door might as well be the Great Wall.   

Silently,  I took a drink.  Water.  Just water.  Huh.  Weird.  How about that?  A gray and slimy looking hand reached down and patted me on the top of my head. “Good girl.  Make it all gone.”

I drank down the water and turned my head to a room that was about the size of a school gymnasium.  Yikes!  Surprise (and maybe whatever was in the water) made it so that my diaper didn’t stay dry for long.

So many babies!  

Correction:  So many grown-up people dressed like babies.  Other than Peter, I’d never seen anyone else dressed up like like...this.  (Imagine my surprise when I got back and found out this was a thing some people paid money for. Fuck my life.)  I’d caught glimpses of other people, new arrivals like myself, but they were with their Fay Mommies and Daddies.  

They weren’t people to me, then.  Just props and pets for the Mad Gods that toted them around.  It’s how I must have looked to them, if I’m being honest.  Everyone is the center of their own story.

Here though:  With all of these grown-ass people crawling around, laying on play matts and batting at mobiles of ancient dragons, or hugging teddy bears that hugged back.  Or getting pushed down perpetual slides by stoic looking nanny Keepers.  Here, they looked like...like...people...like babies...like me.

And it was then for the first time that I can remember that suddenly I felt very, very, babyish.  Not a prisoner or an abductee, but like a baby.  It’s a strange feeling, I’ll admit.  Not entirely bad, but jarring considering who I was, who I really was. 

I suddenly felt like I had been lying to myself, but I didn’t know what about.  I just had this little niggling conflicted feeling inside my temples.

 It wasn’t just water in those bottles I think.  It’s what I tell myself.

If I had been an only child,  I might have doomed myself on those first days.  I might have played with a puzzle that destroyed my fine motor skills.  I might have played with the kids who would have gotten me in trouble (by getting caught...good kids were bad to associate with).  There are an uncountable number of ways I could have reduced myself to something more appealing to Mommy Dearest.  
I had Peter though. “Hey Alice!” He called out to me.  “Come over here, sis!  I want you to meet the gang.” 

Gripping the nipple between my teeth (because fuck me if I was getting punished for leaving a bottle behind), I crawled over to Peter amongst the choruses of horrified existential screams and baby babble.  

“No! NO! I’ll poop, okay?  I promise I’ll poop!”

“Horsey!  Horsey!  Stop!  I’m so tired! Please stoooop! Stahhhp!”

“I miss Daddy Long-Legs!  Where is He?!  Is He coming back?”

“I JUST GOT UP FROM A  NAP!  I DON’T NEED ANOTHER ONE! IT’S BEEN HOURS!”

My crinkly panties were getting soggier as I crawled.  Just listening to this made me want to cry, if not for them than for me.  But big girls don’t cry.  

So I didn’t.

Peter was a much different person when Mommy Dearest wasn’t around.  More at ease.  More in his element.  More himself, I dare say.  He sat on the floor, a man and a woman to either side of him. Peter’s shadow had joined us that day and slinked out of the way.

“Guys,” Peter gestured to me.  “Meet my little sister.  Alice.  Alice, this is Georgie and Muffy.”  Just like Peter, just like me, they both had those same strange elf ears.  

The woman, Muffy, was a brunette in a baby blue onesie and a skirt attachment that really did nothing but add more stuff in her way.  “Are you okay?” I asked.  Tears were flowing down her cheeks. 

Muffy nodded.  “Yeah.  Why?”  Her eyes were crying, but her voice was even and level. She looked down past her nose to the little droplets staining her cheeks. “Oh..yeah. That,” she said.  “Can’t help it. Sorry, I guess”  Muffy had a case of resting bitch face and an almost deadpan delivery.  I can almost still hear her west coast accent.  

“Why don’t you just kiss it and make it all better?” Georgie sneered.  Georgie was built like an old school bouncer. Big and bald and round and thick, even laying down on his side like he was there was something intimidating about him; a crocodile lazily sunning itself.  Georgie was fat, but not the kind of fat that made him look flabby. He had the rounded but bulky look that you see on guys who carry big rocks for fun.

Georgie could have given John Boy at the diner a run for his money.  The fact that he was just wearing a t-shirt and a diaper made it kind of funny.  The big lug softened.  “Sorry,” he said.  “Didn’t mean for it to come out that way.  Seriously though,” he gestured to the crying woman.  “Give her a kiss if you want her to stop.”

I looked at Peter. He nodded.  His shadow gave me a thumbs up.  Muffy tapped her cheek and leaned in.  “Alright.  Alright.” she said.  “Party trick, time.”  I leaned in and gave her peck on the cheek.

Her tears made their way onto my lips, and danced past my teeth to my tongue.  Sweet.  Very sweet.  Sugar water. I thought tears were supposed to be salty.

Then they kicked in.  “Whoah!”  I rocked back.  “Good shhhhiny!”  It was like the kick of alcohol mixed with a hint of molly.  Peter had to reach over and steady me from falling back.  

“Easy there, Alice.”  Hearing my own fake name brought me back to my senses. 

The buzz didn’t last long, but it was enough to get my attention.   “What the fun was that?”

Muffy and Georgie laughed with each other. Peter hid his own smile after I got my balance and was firmly back on my padded ass.  I was being hazed.  Initiated.

“Sorry,” Georgie said.  “Couldn’t resist.  The first time is always a wallop. But you helped.” He pointed across the little circle we’d made to Muffy. 

Muffy had stopped crying.  “At least until there’s another loud noise,” she said. “Or I need a change.  Or I’m hungry.  Or it’s naptime.  Or naptime ends.  Or Georgie opens his trap.”

“Muffy’s a Crybaby,” Peter said.

I nodded.  “Yeah. Sure.  Because that makes sense.”  

“You didn’t tell her?”  Georgie looked to Peter.

Peter opened his mouth, but his shadow slithered over him, waving its arms like crazy. A puff of smoke and a Keeper was looming over us.   “All done, Alice?”  it asked in that same voice that matched literally nothing else about it.  I couldn’t even tell if it was the one that gave me the bottle.  I guess it didn’t matter. reaching down and taking my half.

“Mhm…” I said, and handed it up.  Did you make eye contact with these things or just look away?  I had no clue.

“We’ll save the rest for snack time.” And then it was gone.

I exhaled and heard the other three do the same.  At least I wasn’t the only one.

Talk resumed a second later.  The guard was gone, the teacher was back at the blackboard, and the cat was away.  “Of course I didn’t tell her,” Peter said to Georgie.  “Did either of you find out everything at once?”

“I found out after it was too late.”  Muffy said.  She sniffled, and her eyes looked a little glassy already.  “Couldn’t have stopped it, so whatever.”

Peter gave Muffy a sympathetic glance.  “Fay aren’t real people.  Just weird parodies of them.”

“Yeah…” I said.

Peter gestured to the circle.  All of us.  “We’re not real babies; we’re just going through the motions.”

“I’m following.”

“But it’s the motions as the Fay understand it,” Peter said.  “And their understanding of actual babies is...of actually um...how should I put this?”

“Funnin’ silly,” I offered, then frowned.  Fuck.  I couldn’t even say the word ‘stupid’ out loud.

The others seemed to agree.  “So Muffy is quite literally a Crybaby,” Peter said.  “Cries at the drop of her hat and you’ve gotta kiss it to make it better.”

Muffy blnked  “It’s true.”  No tears.  Yet.  “I’m just tired of getting kissed, so I let ‘em flow.”

Peter’s shadow thumbed over to Georgie and Peter took the cue.  “Georgie’s a bully.”

“Fuck you!”  Georgie shut his mouth.  “Sorry.  Reflex.”

I gasped.  “Why does he get to swear?” 

“Um..” Peter said.  “Because he’s a bully…?”  

“If I ever get out of Here, I’m going into MMA.  I might be bulletproof.”  He paused and thought.  “On my ass at least.”

My ‘brother’ thumbed to himself.  “Me? I’m a scamp.  Mommy Dearest said so.  I get into mischief and play everywhere.  Shadow makes a good scout too.”

I motioned to the dead leaves in his hair. “Is that why your hair is always a mess?”  I picked at a few for emphasis.

“Ooooooooh” the other two said together.

“Bitch called you out,” Georgie said.

Muffy was starting to cry again.  I guess mean words triggered her too.  She was smiling, though.  “I think I like her.”

“Alright, alright,” Peter huffed.  “Point taken.  But yes.  We’re all treated like babies here, but there’s some fringe benefits to the whole pointy ear thing.”  Muffy touched the point tips of hers.  Me too.  It was like an itch on your scalp when someone mentioned lice.

“What am I?”  I asked.

“We don’t know,” Peter admitted.  “Usually takes a bit for it to kick in.  He cast a dirty look at his friends...our friends?  He cast a dirty look at my new friends.  ”Which is why I didn’t tell her before we made it to daycare.”

“Did he at least tell you the rules?” Muffy asked me.

I didn’t have time to answer before Georgie butted in.  “Betcha five swats he didn’t.”  I got quiet.  “He didn’t! He totally didn’t  Five swats!  Yay-yeah!”

“I didn’t agree to the bet.”

Georgie snapped his fingers “Shit. I forgot about that.  Sorry.  My bad.  Sorry.”  Just like that he was a big bald kitten again.

Peter crossed his arms and glared.  His shadow made a show of tapping its foot.  “So the rules…” he said.  Everybody got quiet.  “These aren’t rules rules,” he said.  “Just little tips we’ve figured out for surviving.  You know some of them already.”

“Like?”

“Rule Number One, you already know.  Never tell Them your real name.”

“I didn’t.”  Then the realization hit me.  I couldn't remember it either.  I’d lost it when the Green Lady was Zotting my memories out of me. “I don’t think I have it anymore.”

Muffy and Georgie sucked on their teeth.  “I guessed.  We’ll find it later, don’t worry.  Just once you get yours back, don’t let anyone else know it.”

“Why not?”

“True name means no escape,” Georgie said.  “Once They have that, They have all of you.”

Something clicked.  “Those finger paintings,” I said.  “Those kids…”

“True names.”  Peter said. “And those kids are never gonna be anything but kids.  No chance of escape.”  Georgie and Muffy looked confused. “She saw the art on the way in.”

“Ah.”

“Rule B,” Peter said.  “Never get cau-”

“GUYS!”  A new person was in the group.  One minute only Muffy was to my right, then there was a ginger man in a red onesie and a...a...cape?   I was scrambling backwards and panicking.  It was just like all the bizarre warp effect and jump scares that happened whenever Mommy Dearest took me and Peter out for a stroll.  Only this was a person.

No one else was startled. “Oh, hey Red.  This is Alice.  She’s my little-”

“IT’S GOLDIE!”

“Who’s Gol-?”

“What about Goldie?”  Peter was on all fours.  There was fear and worry.

The new guy, Red, trembled a little bit.  “She’s done.”

Muffy gasped.  “You don’t mean…?”  Red just nodded.  Muffy hid her face in her hands and started trembling.  She looked like she was crying for real this time.

Georgie was doing double takes.  “Do we…?  Do we do something?  Do we warn her?”

Peter shook his head, his shadow lining up with him.  “It’s too late.  Why make her suffer.  Look.  Over there.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.  

Peter crawled next to me and sat down.  He draped an arm over my shoulder and pointed.  “Just watch that changing table,” Peter said.  “But keep quiet.”  A blond girl was being hoisted onto it by tendrils of smoke, while a smokey gray caretaker poofed by up to the side. 

 The girl was pouting and mouthing off, but she was far away enough that I couldn’t hear what was being said.  Her diaper was untaped and opened.  Her legs raised and wiped down.  “So what?”  I said.  “It’s a diaper change.”

“Keep watching,” Peter whispered.  “Red’s got a kind of sixth sense about this kind of thing.”

The diaper went away into a nearby pail.  So did the girl’s shoes and socks. No diaper was being reached for to replace the old one.  She was just starting to notice as the romper was being torn off her and sent into the can, leaving her naked and suddenly very afraid.

“NOOOOO!  PLEASE!”  The cry rang out across the gymnasium.  Gray arms pinned her arms to her side, and a gray mouth opened.  With the girl in its grasp, the pregnant looking monster pivoted around so that anyone who cared to look could see its rows upon rows of shark teeth.  “STOP!  NO!  I’LL BE GOOD! I PROMISE! I PROM-!”

A chorus of shrieks and sobs mixed with the pleas and idiotic giggling as poor Goldie was devoured naked and whole at the changing table; the Keeper’s mouth extending impossibly, like a snake’s.  My mouth went dry and my padding was soaked as I saw her be plunged in head first.   Three shakes.  That’s all it took for the woman to make it all the way down the monster’s gullet.  

A moment later.  The Keeper’s mouth closed, and I swear the pregnancy bump on its belly got a little bigger.  

 That’s when I knew: A quick snapshot around the room.  I saw the kids who were horrified, the men and women who’d calloused themselves but looked on anyway, and the babies that were too broken to notice that one of their playmates had just been eaten alive by their babysitter.  That’s when I knew I had to get out of this place.

“Rule Two is don’t get caught, Alice,” Peter told me.  “The Fay only have so much patience for people who don’t play by Their rules.  That goes double for the ones that don’t call Themselves Mommy or Daddy.”

The words came back to me.  “May we punish them.”  The Keeper had asked in its raspy whisper.

“Goldie lucked out.  She got three strikes.  Had a good run.  We might not be so fortunate.”