Run Away: Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Runaway- Chapter 8

Time fucks with you in the Land Beyond the Real.  I’ve said that already, I know.  But it’s more than just the fact that you can spend what feels like days in a place and it only be an hour to the Fay and vice versa.  It’s your perception too.

With gods and monsters looming over you, threatening to cuddle, abuse, arouse or kill you at any given moment it changes the way you think.  It changes the way you communicate with each other and with yourself. Things get compartmentalized:  Emotions, conversations, activities, senses, everything.  

For example, after I watched a stranger get devoured whole by a faceless monster, Peter and his friends and I all crawled away and broke into a big pile of stackable blocks.  

“Blend in,” Peter said.  “Act like good babies. No naughty stuff today.” So we did.  We started taking pieces and stacking them onto each other.  And at first that’s all we did.  No talking.  Muffy was crying softly, her tears evaporating a moment after they’d drip off her cheeks or chin.  Georgie kept muttering the F-word  to himself.  He still had that ability. Red; the one who’d popped up just before the gray faceless nannies ate that girl; kept popping off and back. Literally.  He’d be there with us one moment, and then he’d warp away in that not-quite teleporting that things did out there in the Land’s endless black void.  Soon he’d warp back with another hollow plastic block, drop it off and be gone again.  Between stacking blocks, Peter would keep looking over to his shoulder, his head tilting as it seemed to whisper things in his ear.   

Me?  I didn’t do anything special.  I just sat there on my knees stacking blocks and adding to the tower we were creating. We didn’t talk to each other.  We were all too busy in our own heads;  fighting off fear and mortal terror, some of us maybe even grieving.  I didn’t know Goldie.  The others did.  Had I just accidentally taken her place?  I didn’t know.  I didn’t want to think about it. No one did.  We were all sitting in a circle, but none of us were together.

It’s remembering times like this that I remember something I read about real babies.  I can’t remember if it’s something I read before I was taken or after I escaped but it’s something that’s stuck with me over the last couple of weeks.  Small children and babies will do something called parallel play.  It’s when they’re playing next to each other, but not playing with each other.

Scientists think it’s because kids haven’t learned to think about the feelings of others yet, like they don’t think of anything outside of themselves as people.  Maybe those neckbeards in lab coats are wrong.  Maybe the kids aren’t selfish, just overwhelmed.  When you have so little control over your own body and mind; when you can’t control your bladder or bowels or your emotions; whenever everything is either orgasmically blissful, soul wrenchingly sad, or just completely terrifying; you have to retreat inside yourself or else tear your eyeballs out.  

Stacking those blocks was a little bit of control and I had so little of that stuff I couldn’t have shared it if I had wanted to just then.  It was like trying to share crumbs to make a sandwich.

Eventually, after maybe half an hour of fiddling around and crying and swearing to ourselves we started to talk.  But it wasn’t about what we’d just seen.  Without negotiating it we’d just started to make the tallest tower we could.  

“Pass me that green one over there.”

“Need the little nubby ones to fill in the base.”

“Long one on your left”

“Put it over here or the whole thing will fall over.”

“What if I want it to fall over?”

“Then I’ll kick your apple.”

“You are such a baby.”

“No you are!”

“We all are!”

A round of not-so-quiet laughter, and then it’d start all over again.

The terror and grief we felt was still there.  We’d just compartmentalized it off.  That’s what the Land did to you.  It made you compartmentalize yourself; split yourself into shards.  Sometimes you were...sometimes I was a terrified inmate in a prison crueler than anything the human mind could implement.  Other times I was some kind of divine receptacle being filled with ambrosia or a parishioner who couldn’t help but adore and worship her goddess.  I feel like sometimes I might have been something close to a lover.  And yeah, sometimes I was just a kid in a cute dress and soggy diaper and playing with her big brother and his friends.

Fantasy of escape. Terror. Grief.  Distraction. Whimsy.  None of these feelings ever went away or left me.  They just went in and out of their little boxes, little cubby holes in my brain.  Just like cubby holes, all I needed to do was glance over to the side of myself and look and I could see them.  But if I didn’t need certain feelings, they’d just go in their little hole until it was time for them to pop back out again.

It’s what I did to survive.  Now that I’m out, I don’t know how to stop being broken into shards.  I don’t know how to get everything out of my cubby hole at once.  I think that’s why my memory is so full of holes and Swiss cheesed.  It’s not just because I had pieces of myself taken; but also because I’ve buried away the pieces that I have left. Stuffed them deep, deep, deep into a crowded cubby hole that was already filled with atom bombs and kittens.

We didn’t talk about escaping the rest of the time before Mommy Dearest picked Peter and me up.  We didn’t talk about anything.  We just played together.  Teased each other.  Got the blocks as high as we could get them even though none of us could stand on our own two feet anymore.  There were brief talks about human pyramids or makeshift stairs out of abandoned stuffed animals, but a puff of smoke and an eyeless monster with an extended belly and a mother’s cooing voice interrupted us.

“Time for yum-yums, kiddos.”  It was fucking eerie how little the voice matched the vision.  At least I’m remembering where certain nightmares originated from.

Black and gray tendrils of smoke lifted us and carried us out of the playroom and into a non-carpeted area that passed as a lunch room.  No fanciful or wonderful highchairs here, just large round tables with not so little bucket seats in them; like sturdier versions of baby swings.  The center of the table was cut out, with another murky black nanny already busy feeding other prisoners who’d gotten there first.  

Tables like this littered the area around us with a steady stream of sunlight constantly pouring through the cathedral sized windows.  Yet another room that was bigger on the inside than the view from the door frame might lead you to believe.  I was just starting to figure out that normal sized anything was going to be the exception and not the rule Here.

“Please, I’m full.” voices rang out right next to “More, more, more, more!”, along with “Can you at least change me?”.  All mixed with giggling and mewling and sobbing and cooing in honey tinged motherese. 

Five seats waited for us.  None of us bothered to struggle or kick or scream as our legs were threaded through and we were slipped in.  My diaper squished as I was plopped in and a plain bib was fastened around my neck.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was actually a little sad that there was nothing magical or whimsical.  I missed my princess pony highchair. 

On the other half the circle, the kidults who’d already been there looked like they’d been eating for a while.  Bits of brightly colored residue ringed their lips and dribbled from their chins, and they were all breathing heavily through their mouths; panting.  Eyelids were beginning to droop  None of their food bowls were empty.

One of them, a man with a teddy bear on his shirt spoke in big halting gasps.  “Don’t wanna...sleep...for months…”  

The Keeper patted him on the head.  “Months?  That’s so silly!  It’s only an afternoon nap, silly!  You’ll just close your eyes and before you know it, it’ll be time to go home with your Daddy!”  He nodded, but it had more to do with futility than actual agreement.

“Gonna...frow...up…” one of the girls said.  The belch that followed already smelled like it was tinged with stomach acid from across the table.

“Don’t do that, sweetheart, or else we’ll have to start all over again.”  That made the girl wail something fierce.  “Someone definitely needs a nap after this.  Just a few more bites and you can put your head down.   Okay?”  Another nod of defeat.

The muck colored Keeper didn’t turn to us as much as It inverted Itself. Bones and joints readjusted and shifted underneath jello-like skin while patches of hair parted and swiveled so that back was front and front was back.  It waved It’s hand over the table and in a puff of smoke, plastic bowls materialized in front of us.

“Let’s see what we all have for lunch today,” the Keeper said

A burbling mess of dark purple and bits of broken up crust was in front of him, a spoon sticking straight up out of the middle.  “Georgie,” It said.  “Your Mommy doesn’t think you’re making boom-booms enough, so here’s some plum pie pudding, just for you.”

The big guy smiled but it came nowhere in the vicinity of sincere. “Great…” he said.  He looked over to Red.  “If we don’t get out of here before...y’know...I’m sorry in advance.”

“I know.”

“ Also fuck you.”

“I know that too.”

Georgie picked up the spoon and started to feed himself.  “Mmmm…” he said, even though bits of purple goop were dripping out of his mouth and onto his bib. Guy was bullshitting. “So yummy…” A very rude but common sound came out from his backside.  “Sorry guys.  This is gonna be a long lunch.”

The Keeper motioned to Red’s plate filled with finger foods.  “Breads and cheeses and fresh strawberries straight from your loving Granny’s pantry.”

“Thank you….”  Red’s bottom lip stuck out and he looked over to Peter.

Stuck in his own seat Peter did his best to whisper to me.  “I’ve never seen a fresh fruit Here that doesn’t make you trip balls,” he said.  “Last time Red had a strawberry he hallucinated that everybody was a wolf.  I had to throw on a nightgown and tell him I was his Granny to get him to calm the fun down.”

In front of Muffy was a bowl filled with what looked like old cottage cheese.  The little insect legs that poked through in places were still wriggling like a dying spider or a cockroach that hasn’t realized that it’s been squished yet. “Can you feed me this?” She asked, looking up from her bowl.  Already her upper lip was curling back in disgust.  “I don’t think I can…by myself.”

A too slender hand stroked Muffy’s hair.  “You don’t have to be scared, silly goose. It’s just baby food.”  

Muffy’s eyes, blurry with tears though they were, traveled back down to the dish.  “It’s pureed arachnophobia.”

“That’s what I said.”  The Keeper’s tone was cheerful and encouraging.  It’s mouth wasn’t.  “Now eat up so you can grow up big and strong.  Otherwise,” she said, “you might never grow up.” Even though everything about It’s voice was still eerily kind; there was a threat there.  A threat that Muffy picked up on.  Even with her eyes closed her tears mixed with the white glop and she started shoveling the disgusting shit into her mouth.

I tapped Peter on the shoulder and motioned to the gang.  Georgie was very reluctantly feeding himself with a spoon while trying not to shit his pants out of some kind of politeness.  Red was nibbling at bread and experimenting with the cheese.  Muffy was trying to power through what might be a bottomless bowl of cottage cheese and spider parts.   

Every time I’d been given food up until then it was either on the end of a spoon Mommy Dearest had been holding, or sucked directly from Her breast.  The closest I had gotten to independently feeding myself was being allowed to suck on a bottle when the Green Lady didn’t feel like sending me into an orgasmic fugue. 

“Sometimes They let us feed ourselves,” was all Peter could tell me.  

“For you Peter” the monster with a voice that June Cleaver might envy, “a special treat for a new big brother.”  A pie, an entire pie, colored pink with dollops of green and blue cream appeared on his dish.  “Dig in.”

That was the first time I saw Peter, my guide and mentor, seem confused and unsure of the bizarre protocol that was everyday life as a Fay baby.  “What is it?” Then he corrected himself.  “What does it taste like?”

“Use your imagination,” was the reply.  “Whatever you want it to taste like.”

I watched as he looked down and around the dish.  The pie wasn’t cut and there was no forks or spoons to eat it with.  He flexed his fingers and made to touch it with his hands. His own shadow popped up and wagged its finger.   “I mean...I’ll be good.”

“Don’t be silly. You can use your hands.  Dig in.”  Then the Keeper turned Its head towards me.  “I’ll be with you in just a moment, Alice.  Let me finish getting these sleepy bear cubs ready for a nap-nap.”

It wasn’t exaggerating.  In the barely two minutes since we’d arrived, the three other kids, once bloated but very human save for their pointy ears, were starting to grow patches of fuzzy fur; their noses turning shiny and black.  “Just a special spoonful of apple sauce.”  

All three were lifted up, their diapers sagging underneath them and carted out on black clouds of smoke to a room of perpetual night.  

“Holy shiny!” Peter gasped.  “It’s buffalo wings!”  The bear-adult-children weren’t too weird for anyone but me and he’d stuck his finger for a taste.  “I haven’t had any since...since you know.”  His other hand burrowed in and took out a messy chunk.  His hand went all stupid and smeared a good chunk on his face but most of it made it into his mouth. 

Peter was so excited he was bouncing up and down, flapping his hands a tiny bit.  “Guys!” he crowed.  “It’s buffalo AND ranch!  And it’s even got the texture right.  Like, it turns all meaty and stuff the second it’s in my mouth!”  He licked his fingers.  “And milk!  Just when I was thinking it was getting a little spicy, BOOM! Instant Milk!”

When I was in highschool I don’t think I ever fully appreciated why the peasants rose up in the French Revolution and murdered their king.  Peter’s complete joy, his utter inability to shut up about it, and just a fabulous disregard of what everyone else had in front of them.  If there’d been a ‘baby’s first guillotine’ in any of the playrooms I think Red, Georgie, and Muffy might have used it on him just then.

“Oh, sorry guys.  I’ll...I’ll shut up.”  Peter took another bite.  His shadow made a thumbing motion across the table and Peter finally took the hint.  With both hands he dug into the pie and leaned out, trying to dump clumps of pink and green and blue onto Muffy’s plate.  “Let’s share.”

“Ah-ah-ah!” the Keeper said.  “We don’t share at mealtimes, remember.”  Peter snapped his arms back.  “And all your little friends love their food.  Don’t they?”

The others took the hint.  They made a show of spooning in the strange Fay food.  Muffie and Georgie took a few actual bites of their slop; even though doing so made him dump another load into his pants a moment later; even though I could see tiny little legs pressing out from inside Muffy’s cheeks and throat.  Red popped a strawberry past his freckled mouth and his eyes went blood red before he slackened with dilated pupils and strangely pointed teeth.

A gnawing in my stomach and a feeling like a mutt pawing at the back of throat reminded me.  “Excuse me?”  I raised my hand like a little girl in school.

“Just a moment,” the Thing said.  “I’ll feed soon.  I just need to make sure the big babies are eating, first.”

Something about that irritated me; pushed my buttons in all the wrong ways.  Big?  BIG?!  I knew I was the new fish, but I was about the same age as all of these guys.  I was pretty sure I was a few years older than Muffy at least and Red totally had a baby face, no pun fucking intended.

The most awful thought zoomed into my skull just then.  If I was supposed to be a little baby, was I going to be breastfed?

“May we care for them?”  One of the Keepers had asked my Mommy.

“You may”  She’d said.

The Green Lady had breastfed me when she’d taken me.  But Mommy Dearest was beautiful.  Inhuman, but beautiful.  These Things?  They looked like a bastard offspring of a girl from The Ring and the xenomorph from Alien.  

My heart was thundering.  My diaper became wetter, out of fear this time.  This was one of the Ones that had tits, too.  Peter’s rainbow pie laced fingers reached out and patted my hand.  Even though his mouth and cheeks were stained with stuff that looked like cotton candy and his cheeks were puffed out like a chipmunk, there was something comforting about it.

“May we love them?”  The ritual had continued.

But Mommy had answered, “Only insomuch that you do not offend me in the act of love.”

No.  I wasn’t going to be breastfed.  I don’t know what I was, what I really was, to Her, but Mommy Dearest would not be cool with me suckling at anyone’s tits but her own.  It was how she’d saved me from dollhood, but also how she’d marked me. 

A bowl of mush with a spoon in it finally materialized in front of me.  No pie for me, either.   Peter looked at me and gave me a guilty looking shrug before digging back into his pie.  At least he had the grace to keep looking guilty. 

Mommy was playing favorites.  

I reached down for the spoon and immediately wished I hadn’t.  When I was five I’d accidentally stuck my hand in a nest of fire hands.  I don’t remember why I was on the ground, but I was five. Even after we can walk, kids sometimes still like to crawl around on the ground.

Fuck...I did not mean to just refer to myself as...  

Anyway, I spent over a week with a welted bumpy and itchy hand.

As soon as I grasped the spoon, my right hand remembered what it was like to be drowning in fire ants.  I dropped the spoon and let out a scream equal parts fear and pain that made even stoned out Red jump in his seat.  The skin on my hand was bubbling- a pot that was just starting to boil- like it hadn’t decided on whether or not it should get the ant bites that I was very much feeling.

“Careful,” the Keeper said. “You’re too little to feed yourself.”  It smiled and I saw rows of shark teeth.  “But don’t worry.  I’ll help.”

It grabbed the spoon and dipped it in the mush for me.  I saw the look on the other’s faces across the circle.  It gets hazy here, but I can still swear that they were looking at me with a kind of smug superiority. Yes, even Muffy who was ingesting fear of spiders.  Even Red who was tripping balls on strawberries.   Even Georgie was quite literally busy shititng himself.

My mind shot over to the bear cubs who’d been taken away just minutes before. The stuff in my bowl looked VERY similar to what they’d downed.  “Am I going to have to take a nap?”

“Not unless you want to,” the Keeper said.  “Are you tired, baby girl?”

“NO!”

“Then open up.”

I obeyed and the mush was in my mouth before I’d managed to open it all the way up.  It was...okay.  Just okay.  Plain.  Ordinary.  It was weird in that it wasn’t weird at all.  I’d already had thanksgiving on a spoon and bliss from a teat.  Even the apple juice made me a little tipsy at times; closer to cider.  This was just...baby food?

I don’t know how the fuck something with eyes can read facial expressions, but the Keeper must have noticed my surprise.  “Since you’re so little and new here, your Mommy wanted you to have something a little more...gentle.”  The Thing had paused as if searching for the right words to spare my feelings and had the opposite effect.

While everyone else was given some kind of bizarre mystical magical mindfuck dish, I was stuck with semi-liquid bread and I wanna say sweet potato that in no way made me feel like Thanksgiving this time.  Everyone else, even Peter, fed themselves. I literally couldn’t touch a spoon to save my life.  They were the veterans.  I was the fucking new scrub.  They were the big kids.  I was the baby among even other babies.

I admit it.  I was jealous.  Neither my suffering nor my relief was equal to theirs and I was jealous for it.

The meal went on like that for several minutes.  Every few spoonfuls I’d get a break.  Thankfully, the bowl was getting emptier and I wasn’t feeling any sleepier or growing fur.

It was just as Peter was shamelessly licking the pie plate clean when the food torture stopped for us.  “Your Mommy is here to pick you up,” the Keeper said sweetly.  A wet rag materialized to drag itself over our hands and faces and we were soon carted out on sentient smoke. 

“By guys,” Peter called back.  “Hope to see you next time!”  Peter made sure to say that every time. I still can’t tell if he meant that in the way a kid leaving school might say or the way a guy with a terminal illness might say it to his fellow patients.  Maybe both?

We were set down outside the lunch area and had to crawl to the front.  Thankfully the reception area was one of the few that seemed proportionately appropriate.

“Well, hello my little darlings!” the Green Lady said as we approached. “I hope you had a good time! Mommy Dearest missed you!”  I couldn’t help but smile and exhale a side of relief.  She was using her nice voice; her Mommy Voice.  Then there was the fact that I wasn’t afraid that She’d eat me.  Peter giggled and his shadow fell in line behind him.

When we were close enough, She patted my backside; checked Peter too. She stood up and her smile faded.  “My wards are unclean.” Her nice loving tone had disappeared behind the cold, flat, clinical tone She adopted when speaking to other Fay.  Bye bye Mommy Voice.  Welcome back Evil Queen Voice. 

Goose pimples broke out all over my skin.  She wasn’t speaking to me; just addressing empty air, but somehow I felt like it was my fault.  Rationally, I knew it wasn’t, but rationally speaking I shouldn’t have been in this position.  

A puff of smoke coalesced in the air and one of the horrid Fay that had sat with us appeared.  “You are dissatisfied, Green Lady?”  Its voice was that low wheezing rasp, the voice that more fully matched Its fuck ugly form.

“You will change them,” She said.  “Now.”

“The care for them was only until your return. You have returned.  Their care is in your hands.”

The Green Lady did not flinch, or gesture or change Her expression in the least.  “If either of them soiled themselves right now, I would claim that burden of care,” She said.  “This happened during your tenure.  Or do you admit to neglecting my wards? Keeping them alive but not caring for them?”

“The girl yes,” the thing rasped.  “We shall clean her.  The boy was already wet when you brought him.”

“He was also less fed, but you did that.”

“You had not yet returned.”

They were arguing over diapers.  Literally arguing over diapers. I looked to Peter.  All he could do was sit back and wait.  His eyes cautioned me to silence.  More questions I’d have to ask later.  More compartmentalizing.  This wasn’t about changing a diaper, I realized.  This was about interpreting the letter of a law; an agreement.  This was two mad gods were playing rules lawyer.

“You had promised to care for my wards,” Mommy Dearest said.

“We did,” the Keeper whispered.  I heard the contempt in its voice.

“To love them.”

“You have returned.”

“Would a nurse not change a bloody bandage before discharging a healthy patient?  Is that love?”

The two stared at each other.  Meanwhile all Peter and I could do was keep quiet, avoid eye contact and watch his shadow dance.  “We shall change both…” the Keeper said.

Two more clouds of smoke and two more nearly faceless monsters appeared, diapers and wipes in hand.  Peter and I were pushed back onto changing mats that hadn’t been there a moment before. Mommy Dearest stood there looking down on us like we were pieces of meat.  

As the hem of my dress was pushed back, Peter’s onesie was being unbuttoned and shifted up his hips.  He reached out to me and held out his hand.  I took it just as the tapes on my diaper were being ripped open.  Our fingers interlaced.

We turned our heads and stared into each other’s faces; ignoring everything that was happening below our beltlines.  Even as baby wipes were dragged across us, we didn’t flinch. Even as new diapers were slipped underneath us and taped on snugly, and we were redressed.  For the better part of two minutes we only existed in one another’s eyes.

When the deed was done and we were back in our double stroller, one of the Keepers bent over; face still expressionless and said in that T.V. mom voice, “I sure hope you two had a good time here.  We’re really looking forward to seeing you again.”  Its breath smelled like rotting flesh.

“Come, my loves,” Mommy Dearest said, taking us back out the door and into the big black nothing that was the Land.

When we got to the Green Lady’s home she removed us from the strollers and told us to follow her to Peter’s nursery.  Like mine, there was the big crib and changing table and toy box.  Standard stuff, really.  But there was no carpet or grass on the floor, just wooden floorboards that creaked when we crawled over it and the sound of ocean waves.  There was something slightly unsteady about the floor, too that I couldn’t immediately put my finger on.  It was kind of like when you go on a big cruise and how you can kind of feel the big floating hotel moving even though there’s no rocking or rolling going on.

“You get used to it,” he whispered to me.

Mommy Dearest took a seat on the floor. It was the first time I’d ever seen Her come DOWN to my eye level instead of boosting me UP to Hers.  It was probably Peter’s first time, too. He seemed just as confused as I was.  

“Did my darling’s have a good day?” she asked.  It was her Mommy Voice again.

“Uh-huh…” we both said.  Not even thinking.  It got hard to think when She used the Mommy Voice.

“What did you do?”

Peter took the lead.  “We pwayed wif friends,” he said.  “Did blocks super tall, Mommy.”

Mommy nodded.  “What else?”

“I got that yummy yummy pie!”  Peter pointed to me. “And Alice ate her food all up!”

“What else?”

What else was there?  “I saw someone get eaten…”  I said and immediately regretted it.  All of that fear and sadness and grief that I’d been feeling got taken out of its cubby hole and dumped back into my lap.  “Why Mommy?  Why are we allowed to be eaten?”  

I shouldn’t have asked.  I wasn’t going to like the answer.  My pulse was throbbing and inconstant like a sprinter that just couldn’t keep up with the pace.  One question was all it took to shatter the illusion.  I’d skipped eyes and ears and nose and gone straight for noticing Grandma’s big fucking teeth.

Peter’s expression said it all:  I’d done fucked up.  He’d never mentioned something like this to Her.

For Her part, the Green Lady seemed to think it was adorable.  “Oh, Alice! You’re just too cute! My precious little girl!”  Emerald hands drew us closer, both of us, into a cuddling hug.  Her body was warm like sunlight through the window on a cold Winter’s day.

“It sounds like a baby was naughty,”  She said.  “Were either of you naughty?”

“No, Mommy Dearest!” Peter yelped.  “I was a good boy!  A good baby!”

Another laugh.  This time blue birds flew up out of the Green Lady’s throat and out the door.  “Oh Peter,” she said.  I saw her long branchlike fingers reach out and pick a dead leaf from his hair.  “I know you weren’t naughty.  And if you were, you wouldn’t be so easily caught, you little scamp!”

I felt as much as saw him visibly relax.  He’d passed a test.  “Mommy Dearest?” I repeated. “Why?” I did my best to sound cute while doing it; just a baby asking a silly question.

“Oh Alice, my sweet sweet Alice.”  Her voice changed as She stroked my hair.  It wasn’t the Mommy Voice.  It wasn’t Evil Queen either.  But somehow both at once.  Two characters speaking in unison out of the same mouth.  “If they ever discipline you so, I will scatter their bodies to the four winds and shove their souls inside dying stars.”

“So they won’t eat me?”

More gentle, condescending chuckles.  “They might,” She said, “but there will be recompense if they do.”  Even that, for some reason gave me comfort.  I don’t think the Green Lady can love, but knowing that I was valued enough, jealously so, that I’d be worth brutal revenge gave me at least a little bit of comfort.

Mommy was a big deal among the Fay.  Anxiety at being eaten was shoved back into its compartment.

Her voice singled back into Mommy mode.  “Since you two were so good,” She cooed, “I think you both have earned a special treat.”  Her gown pulled itself back, revealing two very full breasts, dripping with milk.

We both latched on, each one of us straddling a leg of her lap.  Peter stopped existing to me just then.  I’m positive I no longer mattered to him as the milk filled our mouths and the only thing we could think about was more!

The fresh diaper wasn’t fresh any longer.  The warmth and life filled me and spilled out into my diaper as I emptied my bladder and then started racing towards orgasm.  The other baby- that’s all that Peter was just then (if anything) beat me to climax based on the satisfied grunts and groans I was hearing.  But I was determined to make up in quantity and quality what he’d managed in speed.

We sat there, the three of us, entangled in each other.  Two parishioners getting Heaven from their Goddess.  Two babies drinking Mommy’s milk.   “Good babies,” She whispered.  “Eat up.  Good babies.”

We humped and moaned and cried in pure joy, drinking in all we could, even past the point of satisfaction.  I was never satisfied.  I knew with complete certainty that if allowed, I’d piss and shit and fuck and cum until my diaper exploded and keep going.  I knew just as well that I’d suck and lick and drink and gulp until my stomach was about to burst; then I’d just throw up and keep going, even as vomit mixed with the piss and shit that and already spilled out onto the floor over Mommy’s leg.  It’s not what happened, but it’s what would have happened had I been allowed to let it happen.

I knew this as surely as I knew I’d die one day and I accepted it far more readily than any person accepts death.  Drugs are supposed to have diminishing returns.  You get a little less high each time as your tolerance builds.  Mommy Dearest’s milk was not a drug; it only got more intense each time and my tolerance was eroded.

If Mommy Dearest was aware of these thoughts, She didn’t indicate as much.  All She did was rub our backs and gently shush us and coo at us as we nursed.  After a while, around my second orgasm, it stopped being words I heard.  She either stopped talking in language to us or I just lost the ability to understand.  Either one wouldn’t have surprised me.

I passed out, toothless, still I won.  More orgasms than the other baby.

I woke up in Peter’s arms.  Myself again.  Naked except for a sopping wet diaper.  Him too. The sound of the sea could be heard through his window.  We were in his crib.  Together.

“You awake?”  He was all gums, just like me.  His eyes hadn’t opened.

“Yeah,” I said.  “You?”

“Yeah.”

I scooted a little bit to give him some room, laying on my side, my back pressing up on the crib bars.  Out of habit, more than modesty, I draped my arm over my breasts.

“How long we been out?” I asked.

“Who caresh?”  It was hard to make the ‘s’ sound without teeth.

“I dunno.  Jusht thinkin’.”  

Eyes still closed, Peter reached down and adjusted himself through his diaper.  “Long enough.  I’m wet.”

“Sho am I,” I said.  “Wush wet when I pashed out.”

Peter reached back and rubbed his ass.  “I’m not poopy.”

“Me neither.”

“I wush before,” Peter said.  “We got changed in our sleep.”

That was a new and more than a little disturbing thought: I could be stripped, changed, and wet again while not even conscious.  “At leasht we got to share a crib for nap time,” I said.

“Yeah.  That’sh new.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? I’m your first shishter, yeah?”

“True,” he said.  “Thish ish all uncharted.  Hold on.”  He pulled up a corner of his mattress and reached under, pulling out a frosty white teething ring.  “Alwaysh hide a shpare.  Though I think she knowsh it and jusht let’sh me get away with it.”

We both did our best to bite down and keep quiet as our teeth grew back in, digging our fingernails into each other and pulling at our hair to stop from screaming.  Even though we both needed changing, we also needed this alone time.

Uncharted. So much of this was uncharted.  I knew two things; Jack and shit and Jack left town.  Yeah.  It was time to fix some of that.  Safe there in the crib with him, my curiosity and desire to know more, my need to make sense of the crazy poked its head out of the cubby hole.  “Why does your shadow have a mind of its own?”

Peter tucked the spare ring away back where he’d found it.  “I already told you,” he said.  “I’m a scamp.”

“What does that mean, though?  Why?”

My so-called-brother groaned and grabbed the side of his crib so he could pull himself up to a sitting position.  “Okay.  Fine.  Lemme explain.”

I followed him up.  

“Fay ain’t real people,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“I know…”

“But They act like it.  Go through the motions…”

“Uh-huh.”  Like cartoon characters, almost, I thought.  “I’ve noticed.”

Peter pointed to his elf ears.  “It happens to us too. Magic affects us.”

“What do you mean?” 

A serious look came over Peter.  “When I got here, She ignored me.  Left me here all by myself. Then I stopped being scared as much.  I got bored. I got curious. I got restless.  I explored.  What I didn’t get was caught.  And when I did get caught, I made Her laugh.  That's when it happened.”

“What?”

He leaned closer.  “She called me a little scamp.  Then my shadow started movin’ on its own and helpin’.”

I was just starting to see something resembling cause and effect. “What about the others?”

“Georgie got beat. A lot.  Started picking fights with people who didn’t deserve just because he was so angry.  Now he don’t feel shiny...I mean anything. And he's really good at breakin’ stuff when he gets mad.  That’s when his Mommy stopped beating him.”

“He acted like a bully,” I said. Peter gave me a thumbs up.  I was getting it.  “And Muffy got cuddles every time she cried?”

“Something like that.”

I understood.  “They can’t act like real parents, so they don’t treat us like real kids.  Just...ideas of kids.  Archetypes.  Two dimensional storybook characters.”

“And when we act the part, Their magic gives us a little boost to hammer the point home.”

More than anything that idea terrified me.  To have my very personality and essence stripped away and replaced with a cardboard cutout of a child.  I wasn’t regressing into a real baby, I was being transformed into a type of baby the Fay could understand.  I was being made into less of a person, not a smaller one.  

I wanted to throw up.  “What’s going to happen to me?”  I asked Peter.

Peter drew me in and hugged me.  “We’re going to escape,” he whispered.  “Both of us.”