The New Narnia-Chapter 39: Temptation (Patreon)

Chapter 39: Temptation

Like fire

Hellfire

This fire in my skin

This burning

Desire

Is turning me to sin

Tommy laid on the baby changing station.  Charlie and his Mommy had gone home.  His babysitter had decided to change him one more time before doing the same.  The women’s room changing station was out in the open, and no stall prevented pretty girls looking at the pair as various trendy passed by, either going to a toilet or after washing their hands.

“They could look at you this way all the time,” Nanny whispered.  Her mismatched eyes twinkled like magical gems.  “You could have this every time you were out in public.  Every time you were at home, too, and not just with me.”

Eyebrow cocked, Tommy mouthed the word “What?”

The babysitter squeezed the front of his diaper.  “Very wet.”  He’d somehow found time to soak it without realizing it.  She dug out a new diaper, a packet of wipes, and some baby powder.  “But that’s okay.  As far as I’m concerned, you’re just a baby.”

Her hand stopped him from sitting up.  The strap pulled over him did the rest. The blue pacifier that his sister had gotten him ended up in his mouth.  A single knowing wink is all it took to get Tommy to suck instead of spit it out..

“Don’t talk,” she whispered.  “Just feel.  Don’t think.  Just observe.”

So he did.

Tommy heard the velcro ripping off the landing zone of the old diaper, signalling to everyone what was happening.   He felt the warm soggy diaper go slack, the warm wet padding no longer hugging him quite as tight.  The cool fresh air tickled him down below with the diaper pulled open.  The chill of the baby wipes and wetness was jarring, but refreshing as his skin was caressed with a firm and gentle hand.  There was a kind of vulnerability as his bum was lifted up so that the old diaper could be removed and replaced.  A sense of relief came as the new diaper was slid under him just as fast;  padding that was dry and crinkly and fluffy.  The contrast was instantly noticeable now that he was actually paying attention.  The cool cloud of baby powder was another wonderful contrast.  It was cold, like the wipes, but dry too.  The smell too; a powerful kind of flowery garden that clashed with the subtle stink of urine.  And like magic, he let out a contented breath as the new diaper was fastened on.

 He loved the feeling of his wet diaper, he was realizing, but the sheer difference a fresh diaper could make felt divine.  It was a kind of cycle for his senses: Fragrant, cool, dry, and cushy would turn to slightly smelly, warm, wet, and squishy, which would be replaced by the former and lead to the latter again and again and again.  

Tension and release.  The first verse to a favorite song before the chorus hit.  Then second verse and chorus.  A heavy poop with its own smells and aches and tactile sensations would act like a kind of bridge; and then back to the hook.

Tommy sat up as soon as the restraint was removed and practically fell into the mysterious sitter’s arms.  A few women leaving the restroom let out an “aw”.   “How did it feel?” the babysitter asked.

The words that didn’t even sound like they were coming from Tommy.  “Heavenly,” he admitted.

Mismatched eyes sparkled.  “That’s what Heaven is, Tommy.”

“Getting a diaper change is heaven?”

The sitter’s laugh rang out into the air.  She carried him out of the restroom, and started walking to the van she’d taken him in.  “Not quite,” her head nuzzled his. “Heaven is getting what you want and need, forever.”  

The ex-highschool senior mulled that over.  He supposed there was some merit to that.  Babies never had to work, never had to struggle, never had to fight.  Adults took care of everything, even conflict.  The only bad part about infancy was it didn’t last; couldn’t last.  Everybody had to grow up sometime.

Yet Tommy’s own personal experience was proving that a lie.  Eighteen or not, he had definitively gone backwards.  More cushioning enveloped him in the form of the car seat.  “Is that what you’re doing, tempting me with Heaven?”

Buckles clicked up between his legs over his chest.  She didn’t reply.  Not directly.  “Being a baby watered down version of what it was like before you came to Earth.” She handed him a bottle of milk.  “Being an adult is a watered down version of being a god.  Which did you prefer?”  A tap of the nipple, and a conspiratorial smile before she circled round to the driver’s seat.

“When am I going to that daycare?” Tommy asked on the way home, not quite shouting over a children’s song playlist.  “The one that Charlie said he goes to.”  The one, Tommy thought, where everybody but Charlie was a complete baby, unaware that they could be or used to be anyone else.  The ones who hadn’t luckily thought it’d be cool to inscribe their name on the very fabric of Malacus itself.

The sitter didn’t answer right away.  When she did, Tommy had almost forgotten the question. “When you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to let go of watered down godhood,” she said.  She’d turned cold and bitter sounding.  “Ready to go back and finish what you started.  Ready to hold your nose and take a drink.”  In the rearview mirror her eyes bore holes into the unzipped baby bottle.

He didn’t drink.  Not one drop.  He knew what would happen if he did…

Or did he?  Maybe he was immune.  But if he was immune, why did she want him to drink?   A spider didn’t come out of its web just to say hi.

Other than songs about the alphabet and colors, the rest of the ride was silent. The Nanny picked him up out of the carseat and started taking him to the door.  “Hey, I thought you were gonna give me my pants back on.”

“I fibbed.”

“Welcome back!” Mommy said, seeming much refreshed.  Her polite smile twisted into a concerned frown.  “A diaper?”

Mommy’s frown continued even as she automatically took him into her arms.  “Sorry,” she said.  “He had a bit of a blowout.  Trust me.  You don’t want those shorts back.”

“I am SO sorry,” Mommy started stumbling all over herself.  “We’re still working on potty training.”  The breath sounded tired. Sad even.  “Still…”

“Most kids with Tommy’s condition aren’t potty trained,” the Nanny replied.  

A hint of hope crept into Mommy. “Most?” She didn’t believe it either.  Why would she.

“Tommy would be the first.”  Nanny pointed to him.

Tommy felt his body lean into his mother, and his bum lifted up.  Right on cue.  His confusion didn’t last long.  The feeling of his guts pushing out another load straight into the back of his pants was unmistakable:  The straining, the muscles contracting and sense of relief that coincided as the poop entered into the back of his diaper.  The muddy balm spread and Tommy felt the vague sense of guilt and pleasure that it was still spreading.  Potty training wasn’t just holding it in; it was also knowing to stop when you realized.  Tommy couldn’t stop.  Wouldn’t stop.  Part of him didn’t want to stop.

Mommy didn’t stop or scold him this time.  Her shoulders just sagged a bit.  “He would be…”  All of that rest had been drained as well.  There was nothing like seeing your kid fail right in front of company.  

She was almost the opposite of Charlie’s Mom who had long ago come to terms and even happiness that she had a thirty-something baby.  Having three plus decades of a baby with no need to grow-up was apparently very different than having close to two with a toddler that refused to so much as potty train.

“I’ve got some extra diapers if you need th-”

“No, thanks.  We’ve got plenty of Pull-Ups.”  Mommy went to close the door. “I hope you got enough data from your outing.”

“Actually-”

The door slammed in the not-girl’s face.  Tommy stood aghast.  How could his mother act like this?  Stand up to and slam the door on an extraplanar entity?  Flashes of the old Mary Dean, the one who raided Bingo Halls for deals and had a million  burned themselves into his forebrain.  Oh yeah.  Mommy was kind and loving and successful and attentive to her two children.  But Mary Dean was stubborn and didn’t always let things like reality and practicality stop her from attempting the impossible:  Time to add slamming the door in the face of a wyrd shapeshifting fairy woman and trying to potty train an eighteen-going-on-three-year-old to that list.

“Come on.” She carried Tommy past the old Malacus clock (not so old anymore) and into the bathroom. Catching their reflections in the mirror, Mommy noticed the bottle still in his hands. “Really?” she asked no one in particular.  Still holding Tommy on her hip, she made a point of unscrewing the rubber nipple and dumping its contents harmlessly down the bathroom sink.  “Not even a sippy cup,” she muttered, shaking her head.

Tommy’s feet hit bathroom tile, and he started to bend his knees and lean back onto the floor.

“No no,” Mommy corrected him.  “Big boys don’t lie down.”  Tommy stopped.  Oh yeah.  This wasn’t a diaper change.  This was him getting cleaned up after an accident.  Mommy ripped the tabs off the diaper and picked the dirty thing up off the floor where it felt.  “Bend over.”

The floor and his toes came into view.  The flushable toddler wipes Mommy used were identical to the baby wipes, but her wiping wasn’t.  Still gentle, but rougher somehow, as if she were unconsciously expressing her frustration on Tommy’s backside.  

No powder, either.  

Mommy reached under the bathroom sink and grabbed an “emergency” Pull-Up.  Obediently Tommy stepped in and let the diaper-pant be slid up onto his hips.  It was a different sensation than the diaper change.  It was already formed.  Already perfect.  He didn’t use the Pull-Up when he went in it.  He ruined it.

“It’s okay, big boy.” Mommy stood up and gave him a kiss on the head.  “You’ll get it someday.”

This was different than the diaper change.  The change had been a cycle of tension and release.  Of dry and cool to wet and warm.  This had the sick taste of a mistake.  The reminder that he’d fucked up and Mommy was helping him try again.

Try again, yet doomed to fail.

Pull-Ups were supposed to be transitional underwear.  Temporary things that people wore when they were mastering the art of not soiling themselves on the regular.  As far as Mommy knew, Tommy had been stuck in that transition for over fifteen years.  Damn, that must be frustrating, for her.

If being a baby was a watered down Heaven, never having to care for anything, even yourself  and being an adult were a watered down god having to care for everything but having the power to do so, what would being forever a preschooler be?  Ready to learn but never learning? Ready to potty train but never being done potty training.

It was Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill for all eternity.  It was Tantalus grasping for the apple that was just out of reach.  It was a transitory stage that never transitioned.  Something that never advanced but wasn’t meant to last this long.  

It was struggling along with a D- average when dropping out would just rip the bandaid right off.

It was a tiny bit of Hell.

***********************************************************************************

BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

Tommy shot up in his toddler bed.  The clock was summoning him, again.  Malacus wanted another round.   

He climbed out and his bare feet hit the floor.  Another round of flying and fantastical adventure.  Another chance to be the victor and hero and clever protagonist.  He took a step and stopped himself.  He’d be the big hero...but only as long as he stayed in the world of the clock.  The moment he came back, his life would take another step backwards.  His bed would be a crib.  He wouldn’t be potty training.  He’d be going to daycare.

With Charlie.  And everyone who knew him would just see a babbling baby.


He might not even get that last adventure.  That last fix. That last hook.  Nanny might be there, waiting for him, in all of her power.  Ready to give his adulthood a proper send off.

And whether it was pride, or toddlerish stubbornness, Tommy didn’t want that.  Not for himself.  The curtain had been pulled back, he’d seen the man behind the curtain, and part of the magic had been ruined for him.

But he was in hell.

Better to rule in hell…

How had Charlie fallen for this?  The guy seemed smart enough to have put the dots together.  So did Tommy, but he’d let it get this far, too.  Tommy would never admit this to himself, but he was less the determined hero fighting off temptation at a terrible price, and more the stubborn toddler refusing candy because someone had pointed out how much he liked the stuff...

Growling to himself, Tommy crawled back into bed.  Not tonight.  Not tonight.  His overnight Pull-Up was wet.  DIdn’t stop him from going back to sleep.
*****************************************************************************************
BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

Katy shot up out of bed.  Her diaper was wet.  That wasn’t surprising.  She’d gone to bed in the wet diaper, passing out after masturbating.  She crumpled her bedsheets up around her legs and around her waist so as to disguise what she was wearing.  She had no desire to explain to Mom why she was wearing Huggies in bed.

BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

Her mind starting to wake up, she realized that no one was barging in.  She wasn’t going to be caught.  Not tonight.  Not like this anyways.  Why had the clock rang so damn loud?  Was it always that loud?  She didn’t think so.  Not in the middle of the night.  

Was she sleeping lighter?

Guilty conscience?

Nah.  

Couldn’t be.

BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

The highschool senior got out of bed and poked her head out of her room.  Wasn’t the clock downstairs?  How could she hear it all the way up here?  She craned her neck down the hall.  Nothing from Mom’s room.  No surprise.  Mom always slept like a rock.

Maybe it was a freak accident or something.  Or a dream.  Katy backed her head and moved to go back to sleep.  She had better things to worry about than whether or not she were dreaming about an old grandfather clock.  She reached down and gave herself a test squeeze.

Her bladder was full again.  Could she pee again and it hold?  Should she change?  Before or after she peed again?

BONG!

BONG!

BONG!

The noise settled that last question at least.  Hurriedly, stupidly, Katie shuffled out of her room, confident that her sleep shirt would make the soggy diaper clinging to her hips on a prayer.  She had to deal with this sound or she’d never get a good night’s sleep.

Jefferson wouldn’t like her if she weren’t cute enough.

She rounded the staircase.  “Okay...what the heck?”

The grandfather clock was wide open.  Where a mess of gears and a pendulum should have been was blinding white light.  It was the Arc of the Covenant. Marsellus Wallace’s soul. The fire at the base of the Obelisk.

Slowly, like a mosquito to a bug zapper, Katy was drawn to the inside of the clock.  Unsure of what would happen, and too mesmerized to know why that might be a bad thing.

Tommy snored.