The New Narnia-Chapter 54: Aftermath and Revelations (Patreon)

Chapter 54: Aftermath and Revelations

“So did it work?” Charlie asked at daycare the next day. “Did the deal go down?”

They shouldn’t have been talking about it so openly, both knew.  As far as either could tell, the Nanny might not be omniscient but she had agents and systems in place to keep her informed of everything going on in her realm.  Malacus’s daycare that existed everywhere at once was most definitely that domain.

In an amazing act of self-restraint, neither of the man babies broached the subject until they were herded out into the playground and an unnaturally bright sun shined down on them.  The sound didn’t carry as far in the open air and the other residents provided a soundscreen consisting of their shrieking laughter while animate teddy bears and elf-like daycare workers played and shot a plethora of warnings to shrunken adults with perpetually blank minds and full pants.  

With the rest of Malacus just out of reach behind schoolyard style chain link fence, both figured that if there was a place within the daycare’s perimeter to discuss forbidden and taboo topics, it would be here where attention would be stretched to its thinnest.  Neither was patient enough to wait until being picked up to discuss and they might not have the agency besides to determine when and where they’d meet outside.  Babies don’t always get to choose when and where their playdates are.

So it was singing about shapes and colors with the other adult babies, talking about television, movies, and cartoons during playtime with the blocks, balls, and stuffed animals, and magic on the grassy field and crawl tubes.

For the record, it was Charlie who broke the silence.  “Is it over?” Charlie asked. “Did you get called in?  Do the deal?  Is it over?”

Tommy stood up from the grass and gestured to his feet.  He pounded his fresh white sneakers on the playground’s grass, wearing nothing else but a diaper and t-shirt.  He wasn’t big enough to pull it off, but he almost wanted to pretend he was a sumo.  “Pretty sure.  Woke up in a crib.”  He thought to correct himself.  “In my crib.  Can still walk, though.”

“You could walk before,” Charlie pointed out.  Tommy’s babied Daddy seemed unimpressed about the part with the crib.  

Tommy gestured to his diaper. The light yellow wetness indicator had gone bright teal.  “I’m completely unpotty trained.”  He reached down between his legs and gave the padding a squish.  “Wow,” he said. “I didn’t even know I was going this much.” It felt super comfortable too.  He hadn’t consciously realized he’d pooped at breakfast this morning until his bum lowered all the way down in his highchair.  “Oh. I’ve got a highchair.”

“So?”

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!” Tommy bleated randomly.

Charlie looked like a yappy dog that had finally been barked at.  “What?”

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!,” Tommy repeated calmly. “Cats is based off the poems of T.S. Elliot, was composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber and is definitely not a cult.” He paused a second and sighed when it was obvious Charlie wasn’t getting it.  “I’m not potty trained. All my furniture and clothes are for babies.. But I can still walk and talk and I’ve got my adult mind and memories.  So everything turned out alright.”

Charlie made like he was wiping egg off his face.  “Are you sure?”

Tommy tapped his chin.  “Yeah. I asked my Mommy to make me waffles and she understood me…” Tommy blushed. “I meant I asked Mom…or Mary…or…you know what I mean!”  Tommy had never had a dad before, and he hadn’t figured out what to refer to his mother in front of Charlie.  The fact that his dad was getting his butt wiped on the regular by his grandma definitely complicated matters.

“Yeah. You went back through the clock, but how do you know that was the last time you’re gonna go through the clock?  How do you know, ki…?” Charlie stopped himself. “How do you know?”  Playful nicknames like ‘kid’, and ‘buddy’, had stopped since Charlie had realized that he was crawling around talking to his own flesh and blood.  A friend calling you that was different than your own father doing the same.

Tommy shrugged, “How am I supposed to even know?”

Charlie returned the shrug. “I don’t know.  What was it like?  What did you do?”

Tommy felt the color drain away from his cheeks and a shiver pass through him, followed immediately by an embarrassing hot flash.  The kind of things that went on that last night were barely the kind of things you shared with close friends, never mind an estranged parent.  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Heh.” Charlie chuckled, seeming strangely satisfied. “Okay. That’s got me kinda convinced.  My last night out of diapers was a wild one, too.”

Tommy did a double take. “You were out of diapers?”

“How’s your sister?”  Charlie pressed.  “Is she still um…” Charlie’s  face contorted.  Katy was having the time of her life in blissful ignorance, but objectively there was no comfortable word to describe her behavior. “Is she still stuck in between?”  Without the magic of Malacus to cloud people’s minds and judgment, ‘delusional’ or ‘brain damaged’ might be the most kind descriptor, if any.  

“She was bragging this morning about how she’s been clean and dry all week at school,” Tommy sighed. “If she makes it to the end, it’ll be two weeks…new record.”  The young man cringed in secondhand embarrassment for his sister.  Ironic given the circumstances.

“Okay,” Charlie nodded. “So she hasn’t slid back any further?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Okay. So there’s that at least.” Charlie’s chin jutted out as he ground his teeth absentmindedly.  The act reminded Tommy to use his pacifier. He did.

“What about flight? After my last trip outside the fence, all the little goodies got taken away. Can you still fly?”

“No,” Tommy reminded him, “but I gave that away before. Remember?”

Charlie made a snapping motion with his fingers, but no sound came from them. “Damn. You’re right. I forgot.”

Tommy sat back down in the grass while Charlie hemmed and hawed, looking for danger and loopholes and devil filled details.  Tommy sat both because he was beginning to feel rude for literally talking down to a man who couldn’t stand under his own power and because the longer he stood up the more it felt like his diaper sagged and pulled him downward.  “I”m gonna need to get changed soon,” he mumbled around his binky.

“Yeah,” Charlie said, still looking far off.  “Me too.”  His diaper was more obscured under his onesie but no less squishy from the looks and sounds of it.  “Mine’s about ruined. Gonna need a new-” Charlie gasped and shot his head up.  “The clock!”

Tommy arched an eyebrow. “What about it?”

“What’s the clock look like?  Is it still there?  Does it have a for sale tag on it?  Is it shitty?”

Tommy’s memory was a blue screen of death.  “What?”

“The clock you idiot! The clock!”  Charlie’s voice sounded loud enough that a daycare drone turned its head and started walking toward them.  Charlie’s voice picked up a hint of urgency.  “Where’s the clock? It was shitty and broken when you got it right? Is it broke again? Is it for sale, is it still at your place?”

A terrible truth occurred to Tommy.  He didn’t know.  He’d been so busy with everything else that he’d completely forgotten about the clock.  How did that even happen?

A daycare worker came up and looked down on them. “Uh oh,” I think Charlie’s feeling cranky from the heat. You wanna go in, little guy?”

“Why are you even asking like you’re gonna listen to me?” Charlie spat. He looked back to Tommy.  “That clock is the local gateway to Malacus!”  

He kept talking, even as the woman picked him up and checked his diaper. “Wet, too! No wonder you’re so fussy!”  

“As long as it’s still there there’s a chance that your sister or mom will be lured in through it. Then it’s game over! You gotta break it!”  He sneered. “Shit! Why didn’t I think of that first?”

“Come on,” the elf lady chirped.  “Let’s go in.  We’ll fill your tummy up with a nice warm baba. Get you changed and see if you wanna lay down and go night night for a bit. Enjoy the quiet.”

“It’s not even lunch yet!”  Charlie screamed.

“Someone’s a very cranky baby!”

“I am NOT cranky!”  A light pat on his bottom was all he got.

The daycare worker opened the door and went in.  Tommy slid in right behind her, but either the lady-thing allowed him purposefully, or just didn’t notice him.  Tommy was the only baby in this place that could do more than crawl or walk without something holding him up.  

“Hey there, Tommy!”  Another pair of hands quickly scooped him up.  “Someone needs a change!”  Charlie hadn’t been down on the changing table for more than five seconds before Tommy was laid down on the adjacent one.

“Race ya!” One caregiver said to the other. She wasted no time in opening up Tommy’s disposable underwear.

“No fair!”  the other one laughed. “You don’t have to deal with snaps”

“Well mine’s more of a squirmer!”

Tommy sucked contentedly on his pacifier as the two women gushed over him and the other baby, making him the center of attention. There was something nice about being talked about instead of being talked to, something oddly normalizing as if the act of balling up, tossing, and replacing a used diaper on an eighteen year old was. They were just two women at a daycare changing diapers; no different a grind for them than if they were servers in a restaurant or construction workers on site.

Trading gossip. Making jokes. Doing stupid little games to pass the time like who can change their baby the fastest. Tommy found the casualness comforting in a different way than when Mommy had given him some milk this morning or how Nanny would coo down at him when they were all alone.

“I’ll make you squirm you pointy eared bitch!”  Charlie yelled a few feet away. Technically, none of the caregivers had pointy ears save in Malacus, but the point was made.  Oh yeah.  Charlie was the other baby…  Tommy had almost let himself forget.  “Ugh,” Charlie groaned, “Tommy, would you at least tell her that she uses way too much powder!”

“He says you tend to use too much powder,” Tommy parroted. Then thought to add, “He doesn’t like the feeling of it sloshing around everywhere when he moves.”

A confused grumble found its way out of Charlie’s mouth. “How’d you know?” The answer of certain universal truths, shared experiences or ‘like father like son’ should have been obvious.

“Okie doke,” the woman replied over Charlie’s confused grunting.  “Just a little powder, then.”

Tommy gasped. That was right!  People could understand him!  He waited until the change was finished and he was set back on the ground.  “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome, sweetie.” She patted him on the head. “Do you need anything else?”

“Tommy!” Charlie called. “Tell them I’m not tired!  Tell them to put me down!”  It was too late for that. Charlie was already being carried off into the distance, where little human eyes if left unfocused would see the daycare’s strange eternity.  He’d be fine.  “TOMMEEEEEEEE!”

“Um…Miss teacher lady?”  Tommy asked, unsure if whether or not his childish mannerisms were just a facade or not. “May I ask you a question.”

“Sure, kiddo.” The living construct said. “What is it?”

“What’s your name?”

A blank look came across the faux-human’s face. “I…don’t have one.”

“Why not?” Tommy felt he already knew the answer.

He felt like a psychic when she replied.  “The babies can’t talk, the parents don’t ask, and whenever my mistress needs me to do something it just happens with her thoughts.  So I don’t need a name.”

“You’re an extra?” Tommy asked. “A background player.” Tommy’s mind zipped to the Wizard of Oz.  The Witch, Wizard, Tin Woodsman, Scarecrow, and Lion all had counterparts in the real world who bore passing resemblance to people Dorothy had met in real life. By and large the rest were unimportant background characters and weren’t afforded real names.  “You’re a munchkin?”

The woman-thing didn’t look sad as much as neutral. It was like sadness wasn’t programmed into her.   The metaphor was lost on her. “No. You’re the munchkin.” She booped him on the nose with her forefinger and moved to go away.  “Coming Tammy!”

Tommy reached out and grabbed the living droids wrist.  “Wait!”

She stopped. “Yes?”

“Where do you go at the end of the day?”

Her eye twitched.  These beings had the patience of a saint when dealing with crying and screaming babies, but toddler level questioning was out of their wheelhouse. “Nowhere. I stay here.”

That made sense, what with time zones. “So you never get to rest? Or go home? Or have time for yourself?”

“No.”  She was getting annoyed, but not for the right reasons.  

“Wait!”  

The woman stopped, stiffly and mechanically.  “You got it?” She called off to the distance.  Apparently whichever baby Tammy was was being seen to by someone else.  “Okay good.” She refocused back on Tommy and adopted the same placid smile most people had. “What can I do for you baby boy?”

Tommy breathed deep.  This wasn’t a person.  Neither were Nox and Leadshoulder and all the rest.  They were dream things.  Magical robots at best.  And he alone possessed the ability to interface with them for something besides getting a bottle or playing peekaboo. How could he leverage that in a meaningful way? “Can you… read me a story?”

The caregiver’s face brightened considerably.  This was something they were used to. “Of course, sweetheart!  What story do you want? Little Red Riding Hood? Three Little Pigs.”

Tommy licked his lips. “No…”

“Goldie Locks and The Three Bears?”

“No.”

“I know a whole book of fairy tales.”

“N…” Tommy paused.  “What kind of fairy tales?”

“All kinds. From around the worlds.”

That plural, that ‘worlds’ instead of world made every synapse in the scheming center of Tommy Dean’s brain burn blinding hot.  

“Do you have um…any stories from Malacus?”

She took his hand and led him through the hazy reality warping to a bookshelf. “Of course I do.”

It was the perfect bookcase for such a place: Old and splintered and covered in cobwebs and dust; even worse than the clock had been when he’d first found it. Moreover, it was bare, with nothing on any of the shelves. Completely worthless; something that was more of a danger of tilting over on any poor soul that tried to climb it.  But no one here would find it.  This pampering prison held much for the inmates, but only ever directed them to what they thought they wanted.  Who would want this relic?

The former-senior had learned that things were rarely what they appeared, so he waited patiently for the daycare worker to take a big leather bound book off the top shelf where Tommy had been unable to see.

“Are you sure you want me to read you this?” The woman-thing asked.  Even as she did so she was sitting cross legged and pulling Tommy into the little nest of her legs.  “There are some parts that get very scary.”

“I’m already wearing a diaper,” Tommy joked.

“Okay.” It must have gone over her head.   She opened the brown tome and read from the electric blue ink inscribed on the inside cover.  “The Big Book of Cruel Miracles.  Gentle Reader…”