Old Habits Die Soft

Chapter 10
Mouth Open

Chapter Description: Chris finds himself rid of more habits than he intended.

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As the space-themed pajamas loosened around Chris’ body, they slipped off his shoulders as he became a 12 year old. Then ten. His chest hair was now gone completely, the muscles on his arms melting away into the pathetic spindly arms of a child. His leg hair was swallowed up as he became younger and younger. First eight, then seven, then six. His adult teeth pulled back into his gums to be replaced by tiny baby teeth. The blonde hair on his head was becoming finer and finer, wispier and wispier. His mind was racing, his emotions boiling over. He tried to climb down from the stool smoothly, but instead slipped, falling in a heap onto the tile floor of the kitchen.

He was a five year old again, crying in earnest. His cell phone was ringing in the other room. He knew it had to be Ben, he had to answer it. He had to tell him what was happening while he still could. While he still could think! He toddled unsteadily towards the living room. The colors on his discarded pajamas called back to him. The brightly colored moons and stars blurring in his tear-filled vision.

He sat down, naked, on the tile floor. He became four years old. Then three. Birthdays passed him like the whizzing comets on his PJs. His chubby toddler bottom pressed against the cold tile. He grabbed the fabric of the pajamas in his hands, trying to remember what he needed to do. His memories were like fish in a stream, he couldn’t focus clearly on a single one before it swam out of his thoughts forever.

“Bbbbaaa…mmm…” the one year old infant exclaimed, holding onto the pajamas.

“What’s that, sweetheart? Ben? You want to talk to Ben?” Mrs. Heben picked up the ringing cell phone from the next room. She swept into the room, bent down low and handed the phone to her nine month old son.

“Here you go, Christopher, here’s your toy,” she said, smiling motheringly down at the naked baby, who took the ringing phone in his pink hands and shook it meaninglessly before rolling back on his plump, rosy bottom and kicking his legs aimlessly in the air, gumming the phone with his toothless mouth.

“Mmmmm…baa! Ba-ba-ba!” the infant Chris squealed at the closed phone.

“There, Chrissy, isn’t that so much better?” she asked, scooping the infant up from the floor and turning the phone off. She tossed the phone onto the couch before whisking baby Chris into the experimental chamber. She settled her naked son onto her hip while she unlocked the white door on the side of the room.

Opening it, she revealed the nursery room that she had kept secret since her divorce. A large white crib was the centerpiece of the pastel yellow room. Above it, an infant’s mobile of moons and stars which spun slowly, issuing forth tinkling sounds as the tiny chimes inside of it sounded off. The room abounded with stuffed animals, a large stuffed giraffe dominating the corner of the room and peering over the side of the crib.

Mrs. Heben took her now infant son and placed him on the baby blue changing table on the far side of the nursery. As baby Chris lay on his back, gurgling and babbling, waiting for his diaper to be changed for the first time in over two decades, his mother felt a wave of satisfaction wash over her and she relished in her son’s newfound appearance.

“I told you, Chrissy-baby, you won’t have to make chewing noises in public ever again! Especially now, because you’re going to get nice soft baby foods to eat. I guess I left that part out, but mommy remembers how much you loved your ba-ba! Isn’t that right, sweetie?” she blew raspberries on his exposed stomach and he giggled and kicked his fat baby legs in the air, waving them wildly in the air, completely unashamed to be stark naked in front of his own mother again.

She reached under the changing table and removed a bottle of talcum powder and a box of Pampers’ baby wipes and a package of Huggies diapers. She took a wipe and briskly wiped down her infant son’s naked body, making sure to clean between his little butt-cheeks and what was left of his penis, now only a tiny nub, exactly as she remembered from twenty-three years ago. She smiled to herself as she grabbed her son by the ankles, lifted him clear of the soft changing table and slipped the billowy white disposable diaper underneath him.

“Gaa-gaaaa! Mmmppppaaa…goo-gaaaaa!” the nine-month old Chris babbled from the changing table, snug in his new diaper. All his aspirations of getting a job, getting a girlfriend, moving out of the house were now gone. He would have to start back at square one: a little baby, struggling to keep from pooping in his diapers and being congratulated when he did so.

“Aww, come here honey. Let me give you some din-dins for you to practice your new skills on.” She lifted her son by the armpits off of the changing table and carried him back through the experimental room and into their living room. Sitting down in front of the plasma screen TV, she lifted her blouse, took the nipple of her breast and guided it to her son’s mouth. Little baby Chris suckled on his mother’s breast, gulping down mouthfuls of the sweet thin milk until he fell asleep in her arms, the glow of the television bathing them both.