Fresh Start

Chapter 7
Just Join the Jaybirds

With everyone out cold listening to their music the counsellors gathered up their kits and moved from bed to bed. With thick protective gloves on they pulled back covers where necessary, revealing feet. They took the cotton swabs and rubbed it across the kids’ soles, letting the drug be absorbed through the skin. Ten minutes later the child would leave normal sleep and enter a deeply suggestible state again, listening over and over to their special music and the subliminal suggestions in it, rewiring their minds.

At the same time their bodies began to change as well. Stubble disappeared from faces, pimples and other blemishes smoothed out. In some the changes were more dramatic, inches of height lost as they slept, pubic hair retracting, all their body hair falling out or retracting in. By the next morning most would have lost two years. But one in ten would wake up having lost a decade or more from their minds.

**

As morning light streamed into the windows of Penguin Cabin Ryan awoke to the feeling of weight on his legs, a lot of weight. It forced him up out of a deep sleep. All he could hear was this lilting music in the distance. He opened his eyes a crack, stinging from the light, making him blink. His hand went instinctively to his head, hitting the plastic of the headphones. He pulled them off and suddenly there was sound, not just music. Returning to full awareness it occurred to Ryan that he was still thinking normally. The music hadn’t changed his mind at all! It was a blessing to wake up and still remember who he was. But there was still that uncomfortable weight almost crushing his legs.

Ryan opened his eyes fully and lifted his head, his eyes going totally wide at the sight he saw. A large and completely bare bottom was wiggling around right before him, the boy’s pee-pee visible dangling between his bare thighs. Somebody was kneeling naked on Ryan’s legs, looking off the edge of the bed.

“What the hell?” Ryan cried out in shock.

The boy on his legs spun around and he was amazed to see he recognised him. It was Ben, his bed neighbour. The teen boy didn’t look angry or spiteful anymore. His face was alive with glee, smiling ear to ear. “I waked up ‘fore you did!” Ben announced proudly.

“Oh my God Ben, what’s happened to you?” Ryan asked, horrified to see a teen boy the same age as him smiling like a little boy and giggling.

“I getta be mith gwen’s spefal hewpa!” he told Ryan brightly.

“No Ben, you aren’t a little kid! Remember? You’re a big boy, you’re fifteen years old.”

“Nuh-uh! I dis many!” he insisted, raising four fingers.

So this was how it happened, Ryan thought. It had been hard for him to imagine kids actually waking up with the minds of pre-schoolers just like that. It was especially hard to imagine it from kids he’d gotten to know over the previous day. Now he was seeing it with his own two eyes. Now he could see that it was real.

“Ben, where are your clothes?” Ryan asked, still disturbed by seeing a cohort of his so exposed.

“I’m a nakie boy! Mith Gwen says big boys don’ getta be jaybirds, onwy widdle boys!”

The boy in the bed on the other side of Ryan had also woken up now. He was an older teen himself, probably almost eighteen. He looked a bit younger than he had yesterday though. Now he was staring at Ben with horror. “Shit, it really already happened, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, it sure did.” Ryan agreed.

“That’s just fucked up,” the other kid sighed, shaking his head.

Just then Gwen appeared at the foot of the other boy’s bed. She sat on the end of it and said, “I see you’re awake Billy. Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, fine, but just look at him. Shouldn’t you get some clothes on him?” he asked, pointing at the teen who was now hopping up and down on Ryan’s bed.

“Oh no, he’s fine for now. He’s no toddler Billy. He’s a big boy, which means he’s potty trained.”

“No I mean, just so he isn’t like giving everyone a show. I mean, everyone can see his private parts. He would be really embarrassed if he knew.”

“Well I think he knows he’s nakie dear, he was singing all about it earlier.”

“No I mean, if he was in his right mind, he’d be horrified.”

“Honey he is in his right mind now. It’s you that need to adjust.”

Bill frowned and shook his head. “It just makes me uncomfortable,” he mumbled.

Gwen chuckled. “Does it really bother you that much? He’s only a little boy now sweetie. He still looks a bit big now, but inside he’s one-hundred per cent little boy. He’s just my little jaybird. Don’t you want to be my jaybird too?” she asked, putting emphasis on the word ‘jaybird.’

And as Ryan watched, something happened to Billy. His morose, uncomfortable look was gone. His eyes widened and his mouth opened like he’d realised some great truth. This only lasted for a second though, a flash of shock and then his eyes dulled and his jaw slackened a bit. Gwen seemed to see that something had happened as well. She pulled back the covers to show Billy’s undies. “I think little Billy has just made his adjustment hasn’t he? I don’t think you’re too upset about Benny enjoying his nakie time anymore are you? Yes, in fact I think what you really want is to be a jaybird just like Benny. Do you want to get nakie too, life your friend?” she asked, pointing to Ben.

And Billy blinked and then smiled. It was a big silly grin, totally different from his earlier expressions. “Uh-huh, I’m a jaybiwd wike Benny!” he announced loudly and yanked his undies right off.

Ryan watched with shock as the boy he’d been talking to not thirty seconds ago hopped out of his bed buck naked and giggling. “Do you want to be my special helper too sweetie?” Gwen asked him.

He nodded eagerly. “Uh-huh!”

“Okay, I want you and Benny to go see if any other little boys and girls are jaybirds like the two of you. Remember only little boys and girls can be jaybirds,” she told him.

Billy nodded eagerly and Benny hopped off Ryan’s bed at last, chasing after Billy and laughing his head off. They raced around to the other beds and shook people awake. One girl they woke up immediately smiled in a way that told him she was like them. Most, however, seemed shocked to be woken up by two naked boys. Each time they shook someone awake they removed their headphones and Billy would say, “I’m a nakie jaybiwd. You wanna be a jaybiwd too?”

It was all a part of the programming they’d received in the chair the day before, that had been reinforced by subliminals all night. They had now unknowingly become active participants in the process, actually helping to regress their fellow campers. Along with the messages turning them into little kids had been ones programming them to be ‘special helpers’ which to them meant saying trigger phrases to the other children until they’d all joined them in silly preschool mentalities.

Usually the kids they awoke and asked to get naked just shook their heads or gasped, scandalised. But one boy who appeared to be only about twelve now gave that same surprised but blank-eyed look that Ryan had seen of Bill’s face when he was asked. After a second he nodded his head and hopped out of bed, shucking his undies away and skipping along after his new friends. Of course becoming a little nudist was only but one of the possible triggers, there were many more to come and Ryan had no idea how he would keep his mind intact all week. Seeing what had happened to his cohorts was very discouraging.