Freedom at Last (Part 1) (Patreon)
Content
A HUGE thank you to the person who commissioned this story! It was amazing getting to work and collaborate with them, especially practicing a slightly different than usual approach with a pseudo-dual narrative from two characters. And to make it brief, yes this has continuity with other stories of mine!
If you haven’t read “It’s Christmas, After All” or “Digital Remains,” I highly recommend reading those shorts first just to put yourself in the exact context this story plays off of. It makes some of the themes that this story tries to poke at a bit more meaningful, as well as some of the subtle references. But that’s my rant; enjoy!
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“Mhm? Uh-huh?”
Shut up.
“Really!?” A faux chuckle came from the giant on the giant couch. It was always fake when it was over the phone. It was all fake. All superficial. All a bunch of misery dressed in makeup.
“No! Stop it!” the Amazon went on and on with her exaggerated tone, gossip and gabbitry.
“Oh? Anna? Good as always! –Well, sometimes the occasional temper, but it’s not like you can expect any less,” she continued to laugh.
The girl from her four-walled prison cell narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on the digital screen. Why couldn’t these conversations happen anywhere else? Somewhere that Anna wasn’t, or at least far enough out of earshot to completely muffle or tune out the noise. Pay a bit more attention to the subliminal cartoons, plug her ears with the stuffed animals littered across the multicolored mat. Hell, take a nap, even.
But that’s just who Mommy was. Mommy, Mama, Mother, Mater, Mummy, Ma; anything that sufficed as a hardwired substitute for the name Anna did but did not know. With dwindling confidence could she even put a spelling to the she-who-must-not-be-named. Not “must-not,” but “could-not.” Whenever she tried to speak it nowadays her tongue would make a sharp turn and babble into gibberish, or the part of her mind that wasn’t hers would steer completely into the indoctrinated lane straight for Mommy Town.
It was from a bygone era, but in a distant life when Anna was free and her actual independent self, she could remember people exactly like Mommy. Brazenly strutting about in public with a phone glued to their ear, walking and talking like their surroundings were just dressings to their own personal fantasy. Apparently Mommy didn’t consider this kind of space public, not that it mattered. It never mattered when it was time for diaper checks or even performing a diaper change. Poor Anna wished she could still find the embarrassment in herself to care, yet enough public changes on the park bench had become sickeningly desensitizing.
“Yes! That’s right!” Mommy made a small squeal of glee. “Third year of daycare! Awh, really– I’m so proud of how far my little Anna’s come!”
Just focus. Focus on the cartoons…
“She’s made so many cute friends at daycare, honestly. It’s like a revolving door with all the playdates she goes on!”
What is Jessica the Jaguar doing today? Stopping Freddie Ferret from stealing all the oranges from Mama Mary’s Meadow again? So interesting. So very interesting.
“Hm? Oh, yes. Plenty of times, trust me. With how many messy diapers I have to deal with in the mornings, it almost makes me wish I potty trained her. Almost!”
Thankfully the mat Anna sat on was plush, trying to forget that the very world existed with her short, rounded fingernails plunging into the ground like a giant stress ball. It was all old, it was all the same. She’d heard it all over and over again, but the feelings stayed the same. She’d lost out on the battle against embarrassment. It’d come and come until nothing was left. Nothing but anger and frustration. That never seemed to leave, yet only with time it went out faster and faster once reality made it clear that there was nothing she could do. No one she could turn to.
It made her feel sick, like a knot was tied twice-over in her stomach, tumbling and adding all sorts of discomfort. She was stuck, and it’d been that way for years now. Approximately three. Her concept of time was vague and restricted, to say the least. She tracked the day by events, not numbers. Her morning bottle. The ride to daycare. Afternoon diaper change. Half-past snacktime. Bath time. Bed time.
Blink and suddenly a week goes by. Blink twice and suddenly a month. Close your eyes for a full second and suddenly a year. A whole year. Times three.
Thirst as her new distraction, Anna without losing sight of the TV grabbed her nearby crutch. Rearing her head back with both hands, she nursed a bottle of white substance, down and down it went through rhythmic spurts, far too perfected in technique than she would have liked. After all, she’d been given three years of practice.
But the discomfort stayed as the conversation continued.
“Mommy?” Anna finally turned her head over to the Amazon, still chatting away, holding a mug of something Anna hadn’t tasted in a lifetime. Something only for “grown-ups.”
“No! No, I haven’t told her yet,” Mommy in her own bubble went on with the other person on the phone. “Tomorrow, though!”
“Mommy?” Anna raised her voice. That was the balancing game. Trying to get attention without being deemed as “bratty.”
“I have just about everything. Oh! I’m so excited! It’s going to be just like–”
“Mommy!” Anna shouted fully this time, clearly getting the woman’s attention this time.
Mommy’s eyes were on Anna and the mug was being set down. “Kat? Could you just hold on a second?” Next the phone went down. “Anna, baby? What is it? Mommy’s on the phone right now. Do you want some more milk?”
“No,” Anna’s head gestured the same way her words communicated. “Can you please talk someplace else?” Anna’s hand went back and behind, pointing up at the screen. “I’m tryna watch!”
And instead, all she got was an increasing volume on the screen.
“There you go, baby. Now no more interrupting, got it?”
Anna was already facing the tv again, glumly accepting the compromise.
“Hello? Still there? Yes,” she laughed, “she’s watching cartoons right now. No fusses during a diaper change when I have that on for her!”
And yet a little louder volume didn’t do much if it meant Mommy talking even louder just to compensate. Anna grumbled, yet stayed quiet, but her body didn’t. Maybe it was finally starting to physically reject everything. Everything that's happened. All the torture and misfortune she’d been forced to experience on a day-to-day basis. From the beginning up to the present. Birthdays. Halloween. Christmas.
With that small flame of courage and rage, she scooched on her thickly padded bottom over to the nearest set of bars, grasping them as she pulled herself up and onto her knees. It was a start and maybe a way she could reclaim something. Something just to hold on, or subside this horrible–
A horrible gurgle. A small spurt of gas. A growing pressure that came as quickly as it pressed against her backside like an unyielding force. A tiny grunt left Anna’s mouth, clutching tighter and her body without command pushed in all the wrong places, “subsiding” the discomfort.
The world she lived in was a warped place to have her thinking that there lied dignity in shitting a pair of panties. And yet, only because her basis was messing a diaper. Her diaper. Her already moistened, crinkling diaper of smiling puppies and kitties prancing all over. Those same motifs would be delighted to know that she was making more space for them to play as her emptying mess expanded the diaper to the point of sagging.
Anna’s hands left the bars and she fell back, ideally because her grip had simply slipped. However, ideals as she had known them were long gone. Either it was time to accept ideals as fantasy or to warp her worldview just to find new ones. Regardless, her quiet, panting breath said enough as from her half-standing assisted position she fell back on her lumpy, muddy bum, all encased in a prison she had known far too well for far too long.
At least the discomfort was gone. Replaced by a familiar, bad smell. How it used to make her gag. Used to.
Maybe once upon a time Anna would have revolted and stood right back up in disgust, but there were too many crippling reasons for why she wouldn’t and why she couldn’t. And in such a fragile state that could still rock her heart, the girl opted for her few means of coping, or at least trying to forget. Anna’s hand need only travel down the strap clipped to the collar of her shirt, finding a “coping tool” attached to it. Grabbing it by the plastic ring she popped the silicone teat into her mouth. Quiet and reserved, trying to stay composed.
“Oh, Kat–” Anna could hear Mommy likely interrupt her friend, “Gotta go. Smells like someone has a case of the number poos!”
With all the time she’d been given to figure out her Mommy as a person, Anna knew better than to consider the urgency of a diaper change any kind of mercy. Mommy like Anna must have grown accustomed to the smell, but that didn’t mean she liked it any more than Anna did.
In trying to stay oblivious to her own mess that she was forced to sit in, Anna quietly watched the TV, doing her best not to smell, nor to move, lest any of her senses be assaulted further.
But she barely even flinched when the surprise grope happened. Her face certainly contorted as she felt Mommy’s hand press against the back of her diaper, smearing and massaging what was at least a contained mess that could have been worse, and worse it had just been made. But she barely moved. As much of a surprise as it was, it really wasn’t. By this point it never was. Routine and repetition as her witness, rarely anything more than a new episode of her favorite cartoon could even remotely hit her as one.
“Uh-huh, thought so,” Mommy spoke, finally hooking the back of Anna’s diaper to peer inside, maybe just to marvel at how ever so kindly she had dispersed the hot waste across Anna’s backside.
And after an exhale through her Mommy’s nose, Anna could feel her larger hand tussling the hair atop her head.
“Okay, sweetheart. Let’s get that diapie changed, then we’ll figure out something for lunch!”
Anna held up her arms, but she didn’t take her eyes away from the tv. Half her mind was still focused on the cartoon, admittedly. A small noise left her mouth once she fully realized that they were headed to the nursery.
“Wait!” Anna suddenly spoke up. “Here? Change me here?” She pointed accusingly at the TV. “I wanna watch!”
Mommy looked as skeptical as the day Anna had told her that she was capable of using a porcelain toilet and not the kind that was taped over her hips. Having a full diaper right then didn’t let her reminisce on that fondly.
But Mommy rolled her eyes with a grin. “Well, if it means no temper tantrum…”
That’s all that life was now. Soon, Anna was staring up at the high, high ceiling, laying back on a plastic mat of suns and moons.
Mommy’s head partly hung over her, tugging at the prison on her hips with a brand new cage waiting by her side. And as the cold, wet wipe offered a clean slate for Anna’s backside, round and round again life had come into full-view with its stagnant perspective of diapers, daycare, playdates and more. More and more of the same demeaning, belittling and fanatical infantilism.
“Oh! That’s right!” Mommy suddenly spoke up with a dose of enthusiasm. She always spoke in happy notes around Anna, like her toddler-shaped mind wouldn’t recognize it otherwise. “We still have your favorite for lunch! Bananas and Prunes! Mmmm!”
More mashed food from a glass jar, spoon-fed in her high chair, all courtesy of her warden. It was no smiling matter, nor a laughing one, but Anna did so anyway. Made so, really, as she squirmed from Mommy’s nails lightly scraping the bottom of her foot.
Favorite was a grossly strong word, but…bananas weren’t bad.
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“Any bad reports?” Mommy asked with Anna held against her hip, always seeming to be spoken of like she wasn’t in the room. There were still residual screams and squeals of the Littles left over who had yet to be picked up by their “parents.”
“Not-a-one!” The daycare worker smiled with her elbows in her hands. “It’s always fun though getting to see her and Alice toddling around! Well, crawling,” she chuckled. “But no, she’s been extra polite lately. Right, Anna?” the Nanny smiled at her, yet Anna slightly stiffened.
“Uh-huh…” she obediently nodded, hoping to become just the topic again and not the spectacle.
Both Mommy and Nanny shared a laugh.
“She’s a little wet, but it’s nothing I don’t think she minds; it’ll hold,” the daycare worker added, speaking so casually like it was the weather. And by this point Anna couldn’t see it as any way but that either. A shitty feeling, but an immovable truth. The worst is being told what goes on in your pants before you even realize it. Apparently she was wet.
“Then I’ll take your word for it!” Mommy chipperly spoke while she adjusted Anna in her arms. “We need to hurry, though! If we’re not too late we can beat the traffic…”
“Oh! Well, get going then!” the daycare worker ushered them off with a kind smile. Supposedly kind. “Bye-bye, Anna! See you in a few days!”
And weakly back, as she was constantly forced to, Anna waved.
Dejected and disinterested, she did so, “Bye-bye, Nanny Desna…”
Mommy was usually pretty deft and swift at what she did. Changing diapers, putting on onesies, taking off onesies, replacing empty bottles with full ones and so forth. She was always quick with the car seat, too. Every strap that fed into the crotch, shoulder and waist-strap machination and kept Anna snugly in place.
“Sorry, Anna,” Mommy said from the front seat, peering back just to back out of the parking space, “Mommy will change you once we get home. We need to run one small errand!”
Errands. Not unusual, but typically not after daycare. Anna didn’t care to ask. Instead she leaned forward the few approximate millimeters that her car seat allowed to get her vision beyond the car seat’s mesh padded siding and out the window.
“Mommy? I want juice.”
“We say ‘please’ when we want things, sweetheart.”
“I please want juice.”
“Such manners!” Mommy commented the same way she always did when Anna met minimum expectations. After all, that’s all she did expect. Twistedly, expectations were not meant to be exceeded. Trying to talk like a “grown-up” or thinking she deserved panties was tantamount to misbehavior, temper tantrums and sin, yet dropping the P-word like a cure-all medicine seemed to make her the brightest star in the world.
Anna couldn’t see it, but she knew the seat in front of her was her diaper bag, fully stocked with anything she could possibly ever need to continue living her life as a baby, and that meant juice.
“Both hands,” Mommy reminded with a tinge of warning in her voice.
Anna with both hands accepted the sippy cup, a little happier than she would have liked to not get a bottle. Somehow car rides and outings meant sippy cups, but being at hope meant bottles. It was all peanuts to slightly bigger peanuts, but by this point her standards had been broken so badly that the marginal difference could be her highlight of the day. Maybe the week, even. At least Alice helped it seem that way. Life had become so dull that anything was an endless, recycled talking point.
“Thank yooh–” Anna partially mouthed with the sippy stout reaching her lips mid-sentence. Why wait to finish a sentence if she was thirsty? Why wait when no one would care?
It was a cream yellow T-shirt and pastel skirt kind of day, matched with white socks and velcro light-up sneakers. All tied together by the ample puff between her legs, crinkling each time she swung her legs.
Her memory wasn’t built like a camera, but Anna knew when they weren’t going along a usual route. Different billboards, not the same big colored signs. Intuition? A lot of reasons why she knew they were headed someplace new. Someplace different.
They went through a tunnel, even, which if memory served, that meant they were in the dense city.
Coinciding with the new warmth she was feeling in her diaper, Anna asked aloud, “Mommy? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to pick someone up, sweetheart! But you need to promise Mommy that you’re going to be on your best behavior, understood? That means quiet time for the rest of the car ride.”
Quiet time. A soft-handed way of saying be quiet. Be seen, but not heard. It wasn’t often when that happened. To Mommy’s credit, Anna was almost always allowed to speak, as long as it was using appropriate words and topics. Not about stocks and society, mind you, but toys and daycare.
But by this point Anna knew best not to pester. Better to listen and fall in line. Grabbing the pacifier hanging from the collar of her shirt, she quietly sucked, an addiction she wasn’t a fan of developing, minding her own business. Maybe that’s why she didn’t mind quiet time. Time where she didn’t get to speak meant time to herself. Usually.
Anna still watched, however, watching as they pulled into a stretch of road between a network of parked cars and a tall building connecting to something shrouding over them.
She could see plenty of grown– Amazons, leaving through glass sliding doors with large suitcases in tow. Only did it hit Anna that they were at a Portal Station. But for who?
“Mo–” Anna started to ask, but her pacifier finished for her by muffling her voice into silence.
Quiet time.
But being quiet didn’t mean she couldn’t stare. She tried to observe Mommy’s body language, who was leaning out from the steering wheel, trying to spot something out the window facing the building.
“Oh…!” Mommy quietly gasped, “hi…!” she mouthed in another whisper. Whoever she saw, she had found them and was overjoyed. Anna looked herself, spotting an Amazon in a navy blue windbreaker sort of jacket walking up to the car.
Without a word, Mommy got out of the front seat, and Anna watched her from all the windows walk around the car and up to the Amazon in the jacket. Wait, wrong. Up to someone else? Down to?
The first thing she noticed was Mommy look down at the ground with a wide grin. Maybe not the ground, but something too short that went beyond Anna’s limited scope of vision. Something shorter than the car door, at least.
Mommy leaned down to the point Anna saw her back, then she stood. Stood with something else. Someone else.
Surprise.
Wide-eyed, Anna stared at the Little in Mommy’s arms. Her hair reached her shoulders and it was three whole different shades of brown. Her nails went past her fingers by just the slightest amount, and she wore traces of…makeup? Bewildered, Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the Little. It didn’t make any sense.
She wore a blazer and a blouse; slacks with…stockings…? And…heels? Her fucking knees came together!
And suddenly Anna felt herself trying to squeeze her own, but looked down once the bouncer between them crinkled in protest. If that Little could do it though, that meant she wasn’t wearing a…?
Anna kept trying to turn her head, following them as they moved around her, but this stupid fucking car seat wouldn’t let her! For the first time in a long time she tried to thrash against the straps, but she hardly even budged. What was going on?
Mommy and the strange Little were standing on the other end and the door was pulled open.
“And this is Anna…!” Mommy spoke excitedly, leaning down just a tiny bit, sitting the Little on the seat. The grown-up seat. Not in a car seat. A tinge of something hit her like a ton of bricks. The same tinge that she felt when she saw her knees together, and not the kind that she felt in her bladder.
“Hi…!” The Little smiled. She smiled? The Little waved at Anna from her seat, then spun her head back up at Mommy. “Awh! She’s so cute! How old is she?”
“Well, she likes to pretend that she’s 24, but really she’s my forever-3 baby!”
The Little laughed. She laughed? Anna couldn’t understand what in God’s name was happening, and all she could do was bite down on the bulb of her pacifier. Confused. Annoyed. Worried.
What was this Little doing? Why was she here? Was she missing something or was she just an idiot?
Then she waved at Anna. Waved, like this was some fucking playdate or something. “Hi there, uhm…Anna!” Then in careful enunciation, just like Nanny Desna would always do, she said, “My name is Sarah! Can you say ‘Sarah’?” It was learning animal sounds all over again.
Anna’s eyes were wide, but her mouth was closed. No more open than it needed to be for her paci, which she bit and sucked on vigorously. There wasn’t enough flavoring in the world on those things to simmer down the emotions she was feeling.
“Not a talker?” Sarah asked as she looked back at Mommy, who was busy between the trunk and passenger door.
“Oh, don’t worry, she is! She just had a busy day at daycare today. In fact, she’s waiting on a diaper change that I promised her!”
Sarah nodded, but she did glance over at Anna again before picking up on Mommy’s voice.
“Oh! We almost forgot your suitcase!” Mommy chuckled, and Anna watched intently as she walked to her side of the car. The side where the windows were shut and sound couldn’t reach. Frantically, she spun her head back at Sarah.
“Ruhn,” Anna muttered through her unintentional pacifier lisp. She yanked it out of her mouth as if to throw it, but the strap on her collar went taut and slapped against her shirt, hanging close by. “Run. You need to run.” Anna repeated.
“Wh-what?” Sarah smiled awkwardly, like she didn’t quite understand. Of course she didn’t, because if she did, she wouldn’t be here right now.
“I am 24,” Anna spoke hurriedly, just noticing Mommy starting to come back around. “You need to–”
“Sorry about that!” Mommy announced from the trunk. “Suitcase: check. And, oh! I’m so sorry! I meant to set this up before we came…”
Sarah still looked at Anna skeptically, sucking heavily on her pacifier like she was a chainsmoker, gluing her face to the window. “It’s no…” then she looked up at Mommy with a sizable chair in her arms.
Anna glanced, expecting something, then looking away the moment she was found to be correct.
“Is…is that a car seat?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, it is!” Mommy nodded chipperly. “Sarah, it’s against the law here for Littles to ride in cars without one. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather not get in trouble with the police on your first day here?”
Mommy laughed, so Sarah did too. What a fool. What an absolute fool.
And as the laughter faded, apparently Sarah was still in the minority. “I appreciate the concern, but really, I…”
“Sarah, this isn’t really up for discussion…” Mommy spoke like she was acting before she finished her words. Hah. Like Little like Mommy.
“...Right…” Sarah slipped closer over to Anna, at least to wait while Mommy set up the seat. What’s more, it looked just like Anna’s. Maybe a different color here or there, but functionally the same. Confinement nonetheless.
Anna didn’t watch, but she was certainly forced to hear, enduring her most unexpected session of quiet time.
“W-wait! You don’t need to–!”
“If I can lift my Anna around all day, I can promise I won’t drop someone just as big as her?”
The poor pushover of a Little was being lifted against her will. Was this like culture shock or something?
“Oh! Uhm, that’s okay, you really don’t need to–”
“It’s fine, I insist,” Mommy spoke assuredly over the sound of buckles slipping into inserts. “Besides, these can be a little tough for Littles to work with. Poor Anna tried an awful lot when she first started using one.”
“Right, it’s a good thing they’re kid-proofed, right?” Sarah added, but by this point Anna could hear the slightest sliver of skepticism. Too late.
Anna could hear the ear-to-ear smile in Mommy’s voice.
“Isn’t it?”
Then the door shut, and another opened. Mommy was back in the front seat.
“Okay, kids!” Mommy announced with a hand adjusting her rear-view mirror. “All set?”
“Uhm…yep!” Sarah said, then the car rolled into motion.
“Really, though, thank you so much!” Sarah spoke with gratitude to the back of the seat in front of her. “I can’t tell you how happy I was once I got in touch with someone from here!”
“Of course! I’m so happy I could help out,” Mommy conversed back with her. It was like the twilight zone from Anna’s perspective, regardless of the context. Mommy treating a Little like a…grown-up. Sort of. “Sometimes it can get a little boring with just me and Anna around the house! It’ll be nice to have a fresh face.”
“Glad I could help!” Sarah chuckled. “I’m just so excited to get to be in this dimension!” Anna could hear the newbie marvel as she tried to look from her carseat, but the slight noises made it known she was quickly figuring out the limits of her vantage point. “There isn’t a whole lot of news that reaches our dimension about this place, so I was really eager to get some firsthand experience!”
“Oh, well don’t you worry. You’ll be getting plenty of that,” Mommy spoke confidently, and in a spark of horror it fully clicked for poor Anna. A girl who had just played her part in being an obedient bystander to what was happening.
Anna finally looked over at Sarah, who only noticed her attention a second later.
“Hi Anna!” Sarah innocently waved again. God, if only she knew how she looked. Maybe it was the pot calling the kettle black, but at least Anna no longer had anything to lose. Sarah glanced ahead, “She must be shy, huh?”
“She can be,” Mommy said, “but she’ll come around. I’m sure you two are going to be great friends!”
Sarah laughed. Anna stayed confused and angry. How was she not getting it? Why was she still laughing, like this ended in some way that was good for her? Did…did she actually think Anna was a kid? Mommy’s kid? Was that it?
Anna looked down at herself with a furrowed brow. Velcro sneakers, a pastel skirt too short for her wet diaper, all with a shirt hanging onto her trusty pacifier, strapped in her car seat, so less. Of course it looked that way. In her ongoing years of living like a baby, she’d apparently grown to look the part far more than she had realized, case and point being Sarah’s sweet, foolish ignorance.
But now that everything was clear from Anna’s perspective, there was only one way that this could go. Only one way that it’d end. All that came from the charade of stalling the inevitable reveal, forcing Anna into “quiet time” was simply the satisfaction of shock. All for Mommy’s own pleasure.
And so, finally feeling a twinge and discomfort that didn’t end in her diaper being any more wet or dirty, Anna spat out her pacifier again, roughly grabbing the edge of her shirt and tugging it up underneath her car seat straps.
“Uhm…Tabitha…? What is Anna…?”
And with her bare chest exposed, Anna groped herself just to emphasize one of her breasts, giving Sarah a stone-cold look.
“I’m an adult just like you. I’m twenty-funny-four.”
An eerie silence, save for the car driving across the highway followed her statement.
Not even caring to pull back down her shirt, all Anna did was return her pacifier to her mouth, letting her very adult breasts hang out, just in case Sarah wanted to think otherwise. Whatever. The punishment was worth it. If Anna was stuck like this, the last thing she'd do is let Mommy think she had total control, even if it was in the smallest ways imaginable. Little victories.
Sarah was quiet, but finally the complacent, somewhat skeptical look on her face was gone. She looked at Anna, then ahead, then back, then ahead again.
“Anna…” Mommy sighed disappointedly, “we agreed to quiet time…”
Sarah was muttering something, at a loss for words. It took so little, but her tone finally caught up to speed with what reality was now. She was strapped in a car seat she couldn’t remove herself from, sitting across from a peer around her age dressed in a thick diaper and the latest trend-setting toddler-esque clothes that had already tried to warn her once.
A show was certainly awaiting Anna at home, and it wouldn’t be cartoons. She could already imagine it; getting cozy with her giant stuffed teddy bear, suckling down a bottle of milk while the whole performance unfolded. Maybe it hadn’t hit the girl yet, but poor Sarah was as fucked as Anna’s diaper was wet.
“H…huh?”