The New Narnia- Chapter 47: Work Hard, Play Harder (Patreon)

Chapter 47:  Work Hard, Play Harder

I don't need a spotlight

I don't need a crowd

I don't need the great wide world

To shout my name out loud

Don't need fame or fortune

Nice as those things are

I've got all I need

To feel like I'm a star!

“Playground?” Tommy asked. “What playground?”  

Charlie pointed a finger towards a door that Tommy hadn’t seen before.  “Right through there.”  

Instead of the Dutch doors-perfect for handing infants and toddlers from one adult to then next with no chance of other little ones underfoot from crossing- a perfectly normal door came into view. To be fair, it wasn’t a perfectly normal door.  Perfectly normal doors didn’t have an almost eerie white mist constantly seeping out from the other side.

“How long has that been there?” Tommy asked.  He stopped pumping his legs in the bouncer and was slowing to a stop even as he finished the question.  His diaper was squishing beneath him a little more than it had a few minutes ago; or perhaps he was only just now appreciating it as his weight started coming down fully on it.

Charlie didn’t break his stride.  “It’s there as long as we think about it,” Charlie said matter of factly. “You didn’t think this was a regular daycare did you?”

“What do you…?” Tommy wasn’t even sure how to finish or phrase his question.

“Stare straight ahead,” Charlie instructed.  “Don’t focus on nothin’.  Like a Magic Eye, or something.”

Tommy did, or rather didn’t, and saw the room as it had been or rather hadn’t been for the first time.  A moment before, Tommy could have sworn that the daycare was large, but still manageable.  It had seemed the size of a particularly large classroom- perhaps two with a wall knocked out- that only seemed bigger because of the lack of desks and the size of the occupants.

For a split second, however, Tommy could have sworn the place was cavernous; the size of several malls back to back.  For a fraction of that fraction, Tommy could see even more: Infinite toys, infinite caretakers, infinite changing tables, infinite cribs, and infinite doors leading to more of the same.  Tommy felt his face go slack and his eyes go cross.  A little more leaked into his diaper, and it might have been more than just bodily waste.

A slightly smaller arm brushed against his shoulder and snapped him out of it.  “Don’t look too long, champ,” Charlie said.  “Star into the abyss and the abyss stares back.  This place is literally as big as it needs to be.”

“Whoah…”  For once Tommy was out of words or metaphors.  He’d come to a full stop.

Beside him, Charlie kept bouncing and nodded.  “Yeah.  Pretty trippy, I know.  Works really well for a bunch of people with spotty object permanency and high distractibility.  My best advice is don’t think about it and be happy that tunnel vision kicks in.”

Tommy blinked and looked back to the door with the mist seeping out.  “Uh-huh.”  His breath came out in a shaking shudder, like setting the weights back down after an intense set.  Was it even in the same place or was it anywhere he looked while thinking about it?  Best not to think about it.

The caregiver didn’t give them much of a choice.  “I think some babies need to burn a little extra energy off.”  She lifted Tommy out of the bouncer and checked him.  “Not poopy.  Wet, but you’ll be okay.  You’re sixteen years too late for potty training anyways.”  Tommy looked down at the swelling sagging thing between his thighs that still clung tightly to his hips.  

He reached down and gave himself a squishy squeeze.  He moaned into his thumb and his eyes rolled back into his head.  Sixteen years too late for potty training…  That reminder that he was both seen as a baby and an adult did something to him!

“Charlie?”  The caregiver went on, patting the older boy’s bottom.  “Same.”  She regarded Tommy and reached into her pocket.  “No no no, sweet boy,” she said.  Tommy found his own thumb scraping against his teeth.  “Here.  This is clean.”  A pacifier found its way into Tommy’s lips.  “Now you can crawl and toddle around outside and not have to suck on a dirty thumb.

“Oufide?” Tommy mumbled.

The woman seemed to pay no mind.  “Carrie!” she called out.  “I’m taking a pod outside to get some fresh air.”

“Sure thing Maureen!”  A voice called back.

That seemed to be enough confirmation between the not-quite humans.  “Come on kids!” the first said.  She motioned with her arms.  “Let’s go play outside.  Jeremy, Susie, Martin, Aretha, Winnie.  You too, Tommy and Charlie.  Lindsay, Melody, you can come too.”

A small gaggle of shrunken, infantilized people crawled and waddled towards the door with the mist seeping out.  From the drool and the babble they were indistinguishable from their more appropriately aged counterparts.  Only the smallest differences- the developed bosom; the wider hips; the chiseled jaw; the deeper voice gave any indication that these were people who had been well and fully infantilized and not just infants.

All told, the group was about the size of Scrumpton’s Pre-K unit.  A glance over his shoulder told Tommy that there were many many more ‘classes’ contained in this space.  

“Close your eyes when you go through,” Charlie whispered as they joined the fray.  

Tommy stopped paying attention and looked down.  “Wh-?  OH FUCK!”

Even looking away and focusing on Charlie, Tommy was blinded.  It was almost like an atomic bomb had gone off, or as if he’d been inside his entire life and this was his first time seeing the sun.

Charlie chuckled. “Heh.  Told ya.  Most kids learn when to slow blink after enough trips.  Almost makes me miss that drop from the cavern into the pool on the flying turtle.”

“FUCK THAT HURTF!” Tommy cursed around the binky, rubbing his eyes.

“Ah ah ah,” there was a large finger wagging in his face.  “We don’t use those kinds of words here, Tommy.” The caregiver, an olive skinned woman with curly hair down to her shoulders, said. “Choose better words or you’ll have to sit in time out.”

Charlie suppressed his laughter, but just barely.  “Looks like there’s a fucking downside to having goddamn adults able to fucking understand all the shit you say.”

Tommy ignored him and blinked away the blurriness.  When he looked up at the teacher lightly scolding him,  she seemed a bit more slender than she had on the other side of the door.  When his vision had fully cleared he realized that tucked away behind the dark curly hair were pointed elf ears.  This was definitely Malacus.  

“Yeph ma’am,” he mumbled, looking away.  “Phorry.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she patted him on the head.  “Just make better choices.”

“Heh,” Charlie mused.  “Never heard time out used as a threat before.  Normally we just get separated and put in a crib or sat in a lap when we get too fussy.  They get too fussy...aw fuck it, you know what I mean. So that’s new.”

Tommy refused to spit out his pacifier.  “Whateffa,” he said.  “Where’s the pfay…?”  Tommy stopped mid-sentence.

Shining, shimmering, runic covered, gold glistened in the sun.  The playground hallucination in his old neighborhood had been just a preview, a mere glimpse of things to come.  

The grass was light and springy, perfectly watered without being wet.  The swings, shiny and well kept were all baby style; bucket seats and reclining high chairs suspended on steel chains.  A few of the not-quite babies were crawling up and being deposited into the pendulum rides.

A handful of others climbed onto a push merry-go-round.  A few were brave or foolhardy enough to use the bars to stand up.  More took a seat  at the edge of  a (of course)  remarkably large turtle shaped sandpit.  One shrunken girl was getting  boost onto a spring pony.

The shining beacon of it all, however, was the jungle gym.  Tommy wasn’t even sure if jungle gym was the right word for it. It was less a play place and more a fortress of sculpted plastic.  A labyrinth of tubes and tunnels criss crossed at impossible angles, with slides coming from every side.

The lowermost levels contained ball pits and bouncy crash pads, with ramps for easy crawling and toddling instead of stairs and ladders for climbing.  No monkey bars or fireman poles, either  That kind of stuff was for big kids and there were no big kids here. To make up for it, Tommy saw a dizzying network of crawl tubes and slides.  

A glimpse of an upper level showed bodies walking and crawling, stopping to bat at mobiles dangling from that levels ceiling.   An unfamiliar tot tumbled out to one side and crashed into a ball pit beneath.

“Wooooow,” the pacifier fell out of Tommy’s opened lips and dangled from the clip.  He quickly reinserted it, but the shock was registered.  

“Welcome to the little leagues, big boy.”

Tommy pointed to the person wading out of the ball pit.  “Who’s vat?”  He wasn’t among the group that was only now spreading out.

Charlie squinted and crawled forward a few steps. “Hmmm….I wanna say that’s Franklin...but it’s not like I remember everybody’s name in here.  We’re on a rotation of some kind.  Different groups at different times.”  

Another caregiver came and lifted the boy out in time for another little person to cascade down the slide.  “Good job, Frankie!”

“Close enough,” Charlie nodded.  “Come on, let’s play.”

Tommy took the whole playground in one more time.  “Where do we efen sthart?”

“Wherever we want,” Charlie answered.  “Whatever we want, there’ll be room.  The sandbox will get bigger.  There’ll be extra swings.  I think maybe even the playplace gets bigger.”

To confirm this, Tommy looked up and unfocused his eyes.  Like before, he could see both the stout, if multilayered playplace, and an infinite plastic and steel tower rocketing up past the sun.  Even the chain link fence surrounding everything seemed to be close and forever away.  Yet just outside its boundaries, Tommy could see centaurs galloping and mermaids swimming in ponds.

Here is where all sense and proportion went sloppy dead.

“Oh shiff!”

“Yup.”  Charlie agreed.  He kept crawling.

Tommy hurried to keep up, getting used to the diaper lightly swinging between his thighs.  “Why fough?”

Still crawling, Charlie shrugged more with his head than his shoulders.  “Beats me.  Maybe the magic is more potent here at the source.  Malacus probably has enough victims crawling around that it’s probably easier to make unlimited space than it is to teach permanent kids how to take turns.”

“Or maybe thish iss fuh rear Malacush, and the shpashe outside it where we go on adventuresh ish the back door.  Thish ish where the real power goesh.”  Tommy kept fiddling with the pacifier using his tongue but couldn’t find a comfortable way to talk around; probably because talking around it wasn’t the point.

“Huh.” Charlie stopped.  “I never thought of that. ”  At least Charlie wasn’t having any problem understanding him.

Tommy’s mind started reeling with possibilities and contradictions.  “If there’sh infinite everyfing overrapping in imposhible waysh,” he said.  “Fen how come it’sh sho hard to find a good bounsher?”

Charlie plopped down on his knees and smacked his forehead.  “Oh shit!  You’re right!  Has that spiteful bitch been fucking with me for almost twenty years?”

“Maybe,” Tommy laughed.  “I get the feeling that she’sh not frilled that I can shtill talk.”

“Fuck her,” Charlie concluded.  “Let’s go.  There’s this one awesome slide that if you hit it just right you get an awesome friction shock at the end.”  The pair walked and crawled side by side towards the play structure, Tommy allowing the older of the two to lead the way.  Charlie stuck out his hand.  “Hold on a second.  Don’t wanna get bumped.”

A giggling girl and boy ran right across their path, looking behind them. Just as Tommy was about to ask a question, a child size teddy bear tromped right on by with nubby arms outstretched. “TAGGA TAGGA TAGGA!” it growled, sounding an awful lot like a certain Andy Serkis portrayal.


“Teddy bears,” Charlie explained.  “Good for picnics out here.  Better for tag.”

Pointy eared adults and shrunken forever babies weren’t the only inhabitants in this part of Malacus.  Dotting the landscape were teddy bears; animate and moving stuffed animals that seemed to act as a kind of middle ground between child and adult.  They gave hugs to crying thirty-somethings.  Pushed merry go rounds and fetched sand pails and shovels.  Meanwhile, long legged grown-ups pushed swings, checked pants, and did the literal heavy lifting.  Leave it to a place as strange and fantastical as Malacus to have a kind of child care caste system.

“Why aren’t theesh inshide?” Tommy wondered.

Charlie had an answer for that. “Every now and then, somebody’s parents come into the nursery part to pick them up.”

“But fey shtay away fwum duh pwaygwound.” It wasn’t a question.  Tommy looked at a stuffed bear, laying limp in the shade of a nearby tree.  “What happensh when fey tag you?”

Charlie smiled, proud in his knowledge.  “That’s the best part.  It’s just game over.  Best part of tag is the flight.  Not the hunt.”

“You tag phem, you run, phey tag you, game is ofer?”  Tommy was already walking towards the tree.

“Pretty much,” Charlie said. “They go limp or find some shade.  Then you catch your breath and tag them again.”  He started crawling away.  “Hold up, let me get a head start.”

Tommy started walking backwards to keep the conversation going.  “Any uffer rulesh?  Any out of bound playshes?”

“I don’t...think so..?”

“Good.”  Tommy was close.  Very close. He let the pacifier drop from his mouth and licked his lips in anticipation. Three...two...one… He reached out and bopped the bear on its fluffy head.  “TAG! You’re IT!”

Barefoot and with his crinkly underpants wobbling beneath him, Tommy started running.  The bear sprang to life.  “TAGGA!” It growled, it’s voice raspy and guttural.  “TAGGA! TAGGA! TAGGA!”

“GO!” Charlie yelled.  “Run run run!”  Tommy took off at full speed.  “Don’t look back!”  Tommy did anyways.  He shouldn’t have.

“TAGGA TAGGA TAGGA!”  No elbows or knees, but the thing was right on Tommy’s heels.  It was going to be over!  He was going to be tagged and have to try again!  It was consequence free, granted, but even that might be too much to bear right off the bat.  Malacus’s air had brought with it a slight tinge of competitiveness.

With surprising agility, Tommy pushed off with his left foot and pivoted wide.  Like a matador dancing with a bull, the animate object rushed right past Tommy. “Ha!” Tommy laughed running back the way he came.

The plushie went forward a few more steps before it managed to skid to a halt.  

“Hey!” Charlie yelled, waving a free hand from his crawl.  “Over her! I’m playin’ too!”

The plush thing looked left.  Then right.  Then left again.  “TAGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” It threw its numbs up into the air.

“TAGGA?!”

“TAGGA?’!

“TAGGA?!”

Three more previously limp creatures rose up and started zeroing in on the eighteen year old toddler.  “GOOD LUCK, TOMMY!” Charlie laughed, crawling away as fast as he could.  He dove into a nearby ball pit.  Smart, nothing moving fast in those.

Tommy didn’t want to move slow though.  Pivoting right, Tommy tucked his head and started barreling forward, right between two charging Teddies.  The stitched together things honed straight for him, arms outstretched.  “I…hope…” Tommy panted, “this...works!”

Like a player sliding in to home, Tommy dove at the ground, skidding just below the bears’ reach and sliding well beyond what friction and gravity should have allowed him to do.  It was like the grass itself carried him forward.  “TAGGA?!”

The two bears toddled along, skidding clumsily to a stop.  Meanwhile, Tommy had miraculously popped up back to his feet, his front side only slightly dirty for his attempt.  

“Run!” Charlie cheered.  “Run you beautiful bastard! Run!”  As he said that, an ‘adult’ picked him up out of the ballpit, keeping him well out of reach of the straggling teddy bear pawing for his foot.

Tommy needed no further incentive.  On abnormally powerful legs he sped for the nearest merry go round.  He might have had only the leg strength of a two to three year old, but compared to one year olds he was an Olympic athlete.  

Something in Tommy suspected more, though…

What better way to test his theory than to play with it? Still panting and now laughing with exhilaration, Tommy circled the spinning disc.  “Come and get me!” he challenged.  Not two, but three magical teddy bears took him up on his challenge.

“TAGGA TAGGA TAGGA!”

Tommy ran clockwise, the same direction that the merry go round was spinning.  Like three particularly stupid Pac-Man Ghosts the teddy bears followed him nipping at his heels.  If they had been smart enough to split up they might have caught him.  As it stood, all Tommy of the Terrible Twos had to do was wait for an opening where there wasn’t a twenty something tot to crash into.  “Here...we...goooooo!”

The diapered boy practically flung himself on the merry go round, plopping sopping seat first onto the disc.  Just like that the momentum carried him around the circle.  Less than a foot became a whole diameter’s worth of space and just like that, Tommy was off again.

“TAGAAAAAAAAA!”

Three pursuers became five as more joined the call.

“You’ve got ‘em riled up now!” Charlie laughed.  The caregiver had set him down and the teddy bear teddy bear tagged him, immediately ragdolling afterwards.  “Aw crap…” Charlie said.  “Oh well.  At least I get a show.”

His tongue and pacifier flapping out, Tommy aimed to give a show.  “Come on!” He taunted them, knowing he should save his breath.  “Come...on!”  He wound around a free standing slide.  The teddies were getting better in their swarming tactics.

Couldn’t go around it.  He was being circled in.  Couldn’t go under it, a bear was actually posting guard ready to tag him.  Only one option.

Grabbing the side railing of the slide, Tommy jumped and started rushing up the slide’s incline.

“Tommy!” One of the adults called out.  “You’re going the wrong way! Be careful!”

It was the wrong way, and the bears hadn’t prepped for that.  “WOOOOOOOT!” Tommy hooted and hollered.  The metal beneath his bare feet wasn’t too hot and clung to his skin just enough to aid in the climbing.  The bears weren’t so lucky, slipping and sliding all over themselves.  They would have to settle for waiting for Tommy to come down.

“Tagga!”

Tommy’s tag troubles were not yet over.  As he was nearing the slide’s summit he saw a pair of ears peaking out.  For things without knees, elbows or even proper fingers, these critters could bolt up a ladder pretty fast.  

“Fuuuuuuuudge!”  And yes, Tommy did say “fudge”.  Propelled by adrenaline and forgetting himself, Tommy Dean did the only thing he could without losing the game; something categorically stupid even if he’d been his original regular size.  Tommy leapt!

Just as with the slide, he jumped out, arms outstretched, over the head of the nearest adversary.  In his mind’s eye he’d pictured himself hitting the perfect trajectory down to the ground, coming down at an angle and the miraculously tucking and rolling to his feet whilst using the momentum to carry him forward and renew the chase.

What happened wasn’t as miraculous.

It was more!

Tommy sailed through the air, and didn’t stop!  Like Peter Pan he soared and twisted but the ground never came up to meet him.  And when Tommy’s forward momentum stopped, his downward momentum hadn’t even started.

“What...the…?”

The phrase came not just out of Charlie’s mouth, but out of the mouths of everyone who had a decent enough grasp of the English language to exclaim so.   The eternal children just stared up and cooed in wonder, (those who could be bothered to notice).  The adults began to scream.  One teddy bear took off its own head, revealing something green, bald and with extremely angular features.”

“Goblins?” Tommy gawked.  “Those are...goblins?”  He stopped in the air.  “Fly?!  I can still fly?! This IS Malacus!”

“Gotcha!”  To add to the impossibility of everything, a pair of hands stretched out into air, grabbed Tommy by the waist and yanked him back down to Earth.

“What the-?” Tommy questioned. His question was quickly answered by a set of eyes that didn’t match each other; one emerald green and the other blue as a sapphire.

Those eyes glared hatred at him; the hatred of a control freak that lost the remote, or a cartoonishly obsessive compulsive person finding a single hair out of place on their head.  Tommy went silent staring into those eyes.  It was getting harder to tell, but he was fairly certain that his diaper had just gotten slightly damper.

“Nothing to see here,” the Nanny, now in her young adult form, said.  “Go about your business.”   As if from the word of god Herself, it became so. Teddies went to playing games with forever children.  Adult constructs behaved as if the incident had never happened and babies went back to cooing and playing while delighting being fawned over.  Some cried because the neat flying boy had been taken from them, but it was a simple enough matter to distract them.

Tucked under one arm, like a football.  Tommy squirmed and struggled.  “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Inside,” her voice was gruff and rough.  No longer did it have that playful and seductive tone.  This was Nanny angry and she was clearly not someone used to being angry.

The door from the playground opened with a whoosh, and Tommy shivered as the air conditioning blasted his almost naked body full on.  He stopped shivering when Nanny dangled him out in front of her.

“You idiot! You little idiot!”  Her voice was a lioness roaring, or a tyrannical ruler showing their true colors.  “What were you thinking?!”

“I-I-I-I’m…” Tommy blubbered. “I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to!  I didn’t even know I could fly!”

“Of course you could fly!  The other straggler told you you were in Malacus, didn’t he?  You saw the Teddybears getting up and running.”

Tommy blinked.  “Those were goblins, though...”

“And outside of deformed children getting left in the woods to die,” Nanny growled through gritted teeth,  “goblins don’t EXIST outside of Malacus!”

Tommy didn’t take the time to properly digest that last nasty remark.  “Flying wasn’t against the rules I thought…” Tommy felt like he was grasping for straws.  “I didn’t know.  I didn’t know I could...or shouldn’t…”

In a most unmotherly way, Nanny tucked Tommy back under her arm and carried him.  The nursery was still busy with adult children crawling around or lying on their backs, but no one paid them any mind.

Another door out of nowhere and they were alone in something like a Doctor’s office.  Young Master Dean barely got a good look around however as he was unceremoniously dumped belly first.  “It’s my fault,” Nanny mumbled to herself.  “The flight would have gone away after the next transformation. I should have played this differently.”

Tommy tried to push up to no avail.  His right cheek, the palms of his hands, and his knees were all stuck to the vinyl mat like it was flypaper.  Flypaper had more give.  It was more like those pieces of him had metal plates and a super magnet was just underneath the table.  His bum was left high in the air above his head.  “What are you doing?”  Tommy asked.

He heard the sound of rolling wheels in reply.  “Getting rid of your flying,” Nanny said.  “This won’t take long.  I don’t normally have to do it this way but…” she laughed at her own joke.  “But can’t be helped.”

Unable to move his head, Tommy did his best to make use of his peripheral vision.   From the flashes of white in her suddenly manifested uniform Nanny now seemed more like a ‘Nursie’.  The rolling thing on the stand that she was fiddling with definitely seemed medical in nature.  “Is that an enema bag?”

“Yup,” Nanny said.  Tommy winced when she gave the back of his diaper a pat.  “I think this will hold it just fine.  Then I’ll change you into a nice clean dry one.  Won’t that be nice?”

To put it mildly, the thought of a tube getting stuck up where the sun didn’t shine was far from something Tommy would have wanted; nevermind the aftermath.  “Why are you doing this?”

Nanny ignored him and wheeled the bag around so that he could see it.  “Fun fact, didn’t you know that enemas were once a treatment for madness?  They’re much better at getting out certain types of magic than madness, though,” she giggled.  The cartoon characters stenciled along the wall of the mock pediatrician’s office gave Tommy very little comfort.

Reflexively, he clenched up when he felt the hand of the adult-goddess yank down the back of his already wet diaper.

“Fine,” he grumbled.  “Just do it.  It’s all about what’s convenient for you anyways…”  He clenched his eyes shut and waited for the foreign object to penetrate.

The tube did not come right away.  “What was that?” Nanny asked. “What did you say?”

With nothing left to lose, Tommy spoke up.  “I said that you’re a fucking hyppocrite,” Tommy said.  “You make these rules and the second they’re inconvenient you change them and forget about any promises you made to me.”   Then he added.  “You probably weren’t going to leave my sister alone after I finished transforming, either.”

To his imminent relief and surprise, Tommy felt the diaper get yanked back up.  A second later he was turned right side up so that he was sitting instead of prostrate and bent over.  The palms of his hands were re-stuck, and the back of his legs told him he wasn’t going anywhere, but now he was sitting on where the tube was supposed to go.  

“Why would you say that?”

Tommy tilted his head to the side.  “It’s the prerogative of the dying to speak the truth as they see it.”

The nurse outfit was beginning to shift.  Hints of black started to seep into the nurse’s outfit   Tommy kept staring straight ahead into those entrancing eyes.. “And what is the truth?”

“You have all the power,” Tommy said.  “And you take it from others whether they want it, need it, or not.  You dress it up like you’re doing a kindness, but it’s not about them, it’s about you.”

More black, and the dainty little nurses hat was growing, billowing out on the sides.  “What do you…?”

“You’re not really interested in me,” Tommy said.  “Or Charlie.  We shouldn’t even be blips on your radar.  But because we didn’t go exactly according to YOUR plan, now you’ve got something against us.  Because we don’t fit in.”

The sexy little nurse’s skirt was now ankle length.. “I didn’t…”

Oblivious to the affect he was having, Tommy pressed on.  “You made me a promise and it only took the slightest inconvenience, the tiniest forgotten detail for you to change the terms.”

“But…”

“What do you have against adults anyways?”

The Nanny froze, her jaw hung open, and Tommy finally was making sense of what he was seeing.  He’s seen her in multiple ages and forms.  As a babysitter and nanny.  As a toddler.  As a nurse.  Now, he saw her dressed as a nun, a young one; kind of like from Sister Act.  She didn’t have the full habit covering her hair.  What did that mean again?  A nun who hadn’t yet  finished taking her vows?  It had been a while since he’d watched Sister Act.

 “What do you mean?” She said.

Tommy got out of his head.  “I mean, it’s kind of obvious.  All the adults are magical something or others that you control.  You keep snatching people on the verge of adulthood and turn them into babies for the rest of their lives.”

“I don’t snatch I sav…” Nanny stopped and corrected herself. “I invite people.”

“To what though?” Tommy asked.  “You’re either playing with dolls who can’t go against you in any way or overseeing babies who will never know any better.”

“I have no superiors.”

“YOU’VE GOT NO FRIENDS!”  Like in the cave, Tommy’s voice unnaturally reverberated off the walls of the empty construct room “friends...ends...ends...end…”

There was a long silence before either of them spoke again.

“I don’t have friends either,” Tommy said.  “Or didn’t…. And it hurts.  I know it does.”

“I’m fine.”  Even with all her power and even with how frightened he was feeling, Tommy knew that to be a lie.

“If you’re fine,” Tommy asked, “Then why do you keep doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Any of this.  People who are fine don’t go out of their way to gaslight and humiliate other people.”  He prayed all the bullshit from guidance counselors he’d received about bullies.  “You’re hurting inside.  You’re alone with no one to talk to.”

“I’m not people…” she whispered.  “Not anymore.  And I’m not humiliating you.”
Tommy eyeballed the enema bag.  “Aren’t you?”

She looked at the hose and her expression soured.  “Fair point,” she sighed.  She hung up the tube.  “Long life has a certain emotional distancing effect on you after a while.  There was a time when children weren’t even considered people before they could talk.  When everyone is comparatively a child to you, you stop thinking of them as people.  You start to ignore their emotional needs and reduce everything to simple cause and effect.  Fussy? Nap.  Squirmy? Diaper change.  Hangry? Bottle time.  Flying through the sky?  Enema.”

That wasn’t the truth, Tommy could tell.  Not quite.  But there were nuggets in there that were genuine.

“I’m sorry.”  That part...might not have been a lie, Tommy realized.

“So can I still fly?” Tommy hoped.

The nun outfit was melting away.  Turning back into a daycare worker’s rather bland uniform of jeans and a t-shirt.  Less foreign, but also less forbidden in Tommy’s upbringing.  Hid less curves as well.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, honey.  I wouldn’t want the other babies to get jealous…” Tommy felt his pulse quicken.  Her tone became all syrupy.  “But you’re right, it’s Nanny’s fault for not telling you and you should have to suffer because she made a mistake.”

“S-s-s-so?” Tommy trembled.  “What do we do?”

Her breasts were at eye level with his face.  He was no longer looking into her eyes.  “I know another way,” she said, “to get that out.  It won’t hurt, neither.  All you have to do is say what I tell you to say when I tell you to say it.”

“Repeat after you?”

“Repeat after me.” Nanny confirmed.   “But first, let me say I’m sorry in a special way.”  From underneath the table she took out a light blue baby blanket and unfolded it behind him.  Tommy’s hands became unstuck and he felt himself being turned and guided back, laying. down on his back on the blanket, giving it a less sterile, less clinical feel.

“When am I supposed to-?”  Tommy was cut off by the eighteen year old hand giving his soaked padding a not-so gentle squeeze.  It didn’t hurt, far from it; it was just more than a simple check to see if he still crinkled down there.

“Let me help you relax, baby boy.” She whispered to him as she began rubbing him through the diaper.  “No need to worry about me.  Let me meet your needs.”  Tommy tried to speak, but no words came out.  He wasn’t held down by the examination table, either.  He squirmed and wriggled on the baby blanket beneath him, his legs and arms idly skidding across the soft blue fabric   “Don’t worry about me, baby boy.  Just worry about yourself.  My newest baby boy needs more cummies in his pants, that’s what he’s gonna get.”

“I don’t…” Tommy panted.  “I don’t…”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” Nanny said.  “No fibbing.  If you want to, you can slap my hand away and I’ll stop.”  Her hand didn’t stop massaging him.  It kept going at the same rhythm.  Outside of a few twitches of pleasure, or the curling of his fingers, Tommy’s hands stayed where they were.  “Thaaaat’s right, baby.  You liked playing tag out there with all your little friends watching you.  Didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”  For his truthfulness, Nanny picked up speed.  Tommy let out a moan and stuck the pacifier back in his mouth so he could have something to moan into.

“And you liked bouncing around in your wet pants, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh”.  His breath was becoming shallower, his hear rate picked up, and the pressure built with the speed.

“Looking at all the pretty women, hoping they’d take care of you.”  The words came out in a lopsided sing-song quality.  This might as well be an everyday routine that any caregiver would give to their child, in speech if not in action.

“Uh-huh”.

“Do you reeeeally miss your classmates?”

Tommy sucked hard on his pacifier.  His classmates? Fuck ‘em.  They were literally only nice to him in his fantasy.  “Nooooooo….” he mewled.  Again he was rewarded.  

“Tommy, look at me. Look at my breasts.”  Tommy hadn’t even realized he’d shut his eyes  When he opened them, the Nanny’s breasts were almost directly in his face.  Topless and with dripping milky nipples, the wet nurse-goddess spoke to him.  “Do you wanna suck on these for a little bit?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Then here’s what you need to say.”  She slowed the rhythm of her hand.  “Say: I’m a baby.”

“I’m a baby!”  

The pace picked up.  “Say I want to be a baby.”

“I want to be a baby!”

Tommy was so overwhelmed he wanted to close his eyes. But he dare not.  “Say: I was never a grown-up on the inside”

Tommy was about to explode in his pants for the second time that day.  “I WAS NEVER A GROWN-UP ON THE INSIDE!”

“Now answer me these questions:  Do good babies lie?”

“NO!’

“Do good babies go potty?”

“NO!”

“Will you ever go potty again?”

“N-N-NO!”

“Do you promise?”

“Y-Y-YES!”

“Do good babies do what they’re told?”

“YEEEES!” So close.  Almost there but not yet.

“Do you promise never to fly again?”

“I-I-I?”

“Do you promise never to fly again?  Be a good baby?”

“I-I-I-...please!”

“If you promise, you’ll get milkies.”

“I PROMISE!” Tommy screamed.  “I’LL BE A GOOD BABY!”  Tommy exploded again, feeling all of the energy, all of the.  

His penis wasn’t even done throbbing when he was scooped up and taken to Nanny’s breasts. He didn’t wait to latch on. “Good baby,” she whispered.  “Good baby.  No more flying. Have some milk.”

And somewhere, deep in his heart of hearts, Tommy knew that to be true.  He was a good baby.  And he would never fly again.  He’d promised and Nanny’d said so.  

Finally, he released another spurt, more than a spurt, of urine into his thirsty padding and felt it expand beneath him.

******************************************************************************************
Annie looked down on the boy cradled in her arms, latching on and drinking from her. She’d done this more times than she could remember.  There were always stragglers and resistors.  People who needed to be coaxed into the cradle where they belonged.  

This one, though.  He felt...different.  And not just because he could still talk coherently.

Just.  Different.

What was she feeling?