Personalias's Flash Fictions

Chapter 3
Airport Insecurity

Chapter Description: Going through the airport, it seems something else about you is detected beyond metal and contraband.

Airport Insecurity

You’ve never been great at making smart tactical decisions when it comes to your diapers.  Years ago, when you told your vanilla friend about your kink and how paranoid you were about getting caught or someone finding your stash, they thought you were being silly.

“What’s there to catch? If somebody finds them, just say you have a medical condition or something.  Like you’re a bedwetter, or have bladder control problems.”  The flush in your cheeks was answered with their eyes slowly widening in increased comprehension.  “They have cartoons on them, don’t they…?”  The idea that there could be babyish looking diapers sized for grown-ass men and women didn’t even occur to them.

Yet it was a relief to you. Ye gods, how awful would it be if you were limited to only what you could piecemeal together and pretend was ‘the real thing’; limited to Depends and whatever outfits looked childish enough?  No bonnets. No onesies. No clothes with snaps in them.  It’d be like putting a barber’s bowl on your head and calling it a knightly helm only without Don Quixote’s madness.

No.  Just no.

Thank goodness for the internet, niche companies, and discreet shipping.

You still trended towards subtlety, naturally. You aren’t looking to force yourself on anyone. It’s just the t-shirt and baggy shorts you have on feel a lot better with a nice cloth backed diaper and a plain white onesie to hold it all together.  To one side of your brain, you’re wearing a grown-up disguise so that you can play pretend amongst the ‘real’ adults. To the other side, you are the world’s most discreet and timid exhibitionist; afraid of getting caught and shunned.

You just wanna be yourself! What’s so wrong with that?

Here in the airport security line, that more anxious side is currently blaring at full volume.  Your tongue becomes like sandpaper while you slip your shoes off and put them in a bin with your belt.  Your diaper is dry too.  You never thought you’d be too nervous to pee, but here you are.

This will be fine. There’s no risk of anyone seeing your diaper. To all onlookers, the onesie will just look like you have a basic undershirt that is successfully tucked in. 

It’s not what you’re wearing that’s making your heart thud in your chest.  It’s the bag.

It doesn’t look very much like a diaper bag. It’s plain brown with no babyish decorations.  It could be a purse, or a laptop bag, or just a satchel.

It is a diaper bag, however.  That’s what it was marketed as. That’s what you’re using it for.  It’s packed with wipes, powder, a (for now) empty baby bottle, and two spare diapers. Also your wallet, cell phone, and keys, but that’s besides the point. 

You didn’t need to bring the diaper bag along. You aren’t actually incontinent, and even if you were, your diapers are absorbent enough that they probably wouldn’t leak between now and the time your plane touches down.

It’s just…

You liked the idea of carrying around your very own diaper bag.  You romanticized the idea of having an accident before takeoff, and then sitting in for a few hours, perhaps adding to it, and then whisking yourself away to a bathroom to change.  There was something lovely about that idea…

This is stupid. This whole thing is stupid.  You should have just packed these diapers in your suitcase with the rest. The people at the x-ray machine would see your diapers. They’d see how big the diapers were. They’d know that they weren’t small enough to fit an actual baby. 

They’d know. Everyone would know.

You inhale and hold your breath as you put the bag on the conveyor belt.  “Any liquids, or large electronics?” The man stationed near the front of the belt asks.  You mutely shake your head and wince as they push your bag along the rollers towards the x-ray machine.

“We’ve got some pumps and breast milk,” a woman behind you says, putting a large navy blue bag behind your plain brown diaper bag.   You glance at her, and the color shoots away from your face and towards your feet.  Oh crap! Someone with a real baby!  The man behind her with the newborn in a carrier tells you what you already know.

“That’s fine,” the guard says.

But you know the truth.  It is not fine. You’re about to accidentally traumatize a new mother with your fetish.  You’re about to be exposed and go from being the world’s most discreet exhibitionist to a full on untouchable.

No.  You breathe.  That’s not what’s going to happen.  You temper the extreme paranoia you’re feeling with cold reptilian logic.  You’re not going to be outed here.  There’s nothing dangerous or suspicious in your bag and the people at the TSA have seen much weirder shit than some big baby diapers. You’ll be forgotten less than thirty seconds after you get through security and nobody but you and the guy looking for bombs and drugs will ever know.

“Next!” A guard on the other side of the body scanner calls you. You turn your head in time to see a man step outside of the hollow glass booth and follow in his footsteps.  You angle your head down to the floor and shuffle forward, breathing shallowly. You place your socked feet on the yellow footprints and raise your arms above your head before the person running the scanner can instruct you to.

“Arms up,” they say calmly, despite you already following their instructions.

The vertical bar quickly whooshes past your sight, scanning you in the blink of an eye. You exhale and lower your arms down.  No beeps. No boops. No buzzers. That should mean you’re in the clear, or so you think.

“Step out and to the side, please.” A guard commands.

Out and to the side?! What was wrong? What happened?  Did you leave something in your pockets?  Is something…bulging unnaturally?  You stare down at your crotch and feel as if you have X-Ray vision.  Surely, the diaper bulge beneath your onesie and baggy shorts isn’t THAT noticeable, right?

Right?!

“Come on,” the guard coaxes you, gently. “Out we go!”

You step forward out the other side of the body scanner, the papery crinkle of your diaper sounding off in your ears despite the din of the machines and foot traffic all around you.  It’s drowned out by the thump-thump-thumping as your heart threatens to leap out of your chest.

Out of the corner of your eye you see a guard at the X-ray machine rifling through a plain brown satchel bag; your diaper bag!  And he’s taking out everything!

Why?

Why would he do that? It’s just a wallet, phone, keys, wipes, and some diapers! Big, crinkly, childish looking baby diapers that fit you perfectly so as to bring you incredible joy and comfort in private and drive you to humiliating despair in public.  He stacks the two spares you packed on a counter and pulls out the baby powder. He pours some out and reaches for what looks like a chemical testing strip.

Oh no!  The powder!  They’re making sure that it’s not some kind of a bomb! You KNEW you should have packed it in your suitcase, but noooooooooo, you just HAD to live the full fantasy and smell extra babyish when you changed yourself in the airport bathroom.

You’re going to purge. You just know it. As soon as this is over, you are getting off that plane and dumping your entire suitcase full of baby clothes and diapers into a fucking dumpster.

You freak.

You loser.

You monster.

You look behind you at the lady with the breast pump and realize you haven’t been breathing.  She’s smiling and waving at you, gently shooing you forward. 

A silent prayer: Please don’t let her see what’s in your bag.  Please let her and her husband and their kid be at just the right angle so that the x-ray machine and body scanner are blocking their view of your privacy being grievously violated.

“Come on!” A strange man chirps and yanks you the rest of the way out of the scanner.

“Sorry about this, Dad,” the guard says to the stranger. The way he says it reminds you of when you were a child and people who didn’t know your parent’s names would just call them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ as a shorthand. 

“Daddy?”  The word leaps out of your mouth unbidden.  You’d only meant to copy what was said, not to add your own infantile twist.

“Just hold on a second, baby,” the stranger says quietly. “Just gotta prove that you’re not a terrorist or something.”  He shakes his head and laughs to himself while he pulls your pants down, and exposes your onesie.

Terrified and overwhelmed, you freeze. Knees and elbows locked. Throat tight. Hard to breathe.  The man, Daddy, reaches right between your legs like he’s done it a billion times and unsnaps each button of your onesie. 

“I’m sorry about this,” the guard says. “It’s just protocol.’

“Yeah,” Daddy says. “I get it.”  He lifts up the onesie, exposing your heavy sodden diaper. You have no idea when you stopped holding it, but the wetness line is bright blue   “Looks like you caught us before we sprung a leak!”

The guard laughs nervously.  “Looks like it.  Sorry again.”

“Not a problem, sir,” Daddy replies. Then he looks to you.  “Okay, baby. Why don’t you step out?”  He pulls your shorts down past your ankles until they’re just a puddle on the floor.

Your legs and brain numb, your body does as instructed, stepping out one foot of a time until you’re left in nothing but your t-shirt, onesie, and socks.

“What happened here?” The woman with the baby supplies asks.  Your skin alights anew.  This shouldn’t be happening!

Daddy talks past you.  “Body scanner thought a diaper was an explosive device or something.”
The woman laughs and moves over to the rollers by the X-Ray machine.  “Not unless it’s diarrhea!” she quips.  She picks up the bag filled with milk, breast pumps and such.  The man who was rifling through your diaper bag has repacked it and handed it back to her.   “No pants?”

Daddy shrugs.  “They need a change anyway, and it’s not that cold.”  Without further preamble he grabs your t-shirt and tugs it up over your head. You’re too bamboozled to resist.

“Fair enough,” the woman says. She grabs your wrist.  “Come on honey bunny. Follow Mommy.  Let’s go get changed.”

“Mommy?!”  Your confused words fall on deaf ears.

“You sure, babe?” Daddy asks. “You got the last one.”

The conversation has started to move away from the security line.  You’re waddling helplessly behind Mommy and Daddy.  You look behind you and see that the young man with the baby carrier behind her was with another young lady.

“I’d like to nurse before we get on the plane,” Mommy tells Daddy.  “Clean bum and full tummy.  If we’re lucky they’ll sleep through the flight back home.  Keep the bottled stuff as an emergency if they get fussy in mid air.”

Daddy slows down. “Good idea.  I’ll go to the bathroom too.”  The gulf between you is increasing as Mommy leads you towards a clearly marked area designated for breastfeeding and diaper changing.

“Take your time,” Mommy calls back to him.  “We’ll be awhile.”

Everything is happening so fast, that only one word has time to come out before you cross the threshold into the nursing station.  “Home?”

You were supposed to go on vacation today.