Visions

Chapter 1
Visions

“And…done!”

The two young men frowned at Catherine as the woman emerged from the adjacent room to pluck the headphones from their ears.

“That’s it?” Brad asked. “We didn’t even have them in for a minute.”

“And all I heard was, like, this weird droning noise,” Tom added as he narrowed his eyes at his mother. “You’re sure that this is enough to get us off the hook?”

“Positive.” Catherine smiled as she crossed her arms and looked down at her son and his best friend. “All you have to do is come back tomorrow so that I can make note of what effect – if any – the recording has had on you. Once the experiment is complete, it’ll be as though the…incident never happened. In the eyes of the trustees, anyway. It’d still be good of you to apologize to the young women you – ”

“Yeah, yeah, thanks mom,” Tom mumbled as he and his friend got out of their chairs.

“Yeah, thanks Cathy.”

The woman frowned at the pair but neither saw as they were already on their way out the door.

“Don’t mention it,” she sighed. “Remember, I need you back here at twelve noon tomorrow. Be sure to take note of anything that happens between then and now so that I may – ”

“Keep track of the way you fucked up our heads for science,” Tom called out over his shoulder as he and his friend turned the corner. “You got it, mom.”

Their laughter echoed back into the lab as the two young men strode down the hall, loudly telling rude jokes to one another as they debated each other over which one of them had just been turned gay by the subliminal treatment. Catherine looked after them until she couldn’t hear their voices any longer. She shook her head and set about removing any evidence that the experiment had taken place. The trustees would, indeed, be very interested in knowing what she was up to, but not because they had any interest in rehabilitating her boneheaded son or his burnout friend. Try as she might, even a researcher of her standing lacked the sway to convince the university to not indefinitely suspend the pair for an ill-advised prank on the young ladies of Zeta Alpha Zeta, a shortcoming that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Learning that she wouldn’t be able to get Tom off the hook – again – finally gave her the motivation she needed to resort to the nuclear option, to lie to her son and his friend, to conduct the experiment that was as groundbreaking as it was unethical. She had presented it to the young men as not only their one chance to escape punishment for their prank but as a subliminal cure-all for the bad habits that had sabotaged their college careers, a quick and easy way to give them a new lease on life. Brad and Tom – being Brad and Tom – paid little attention to those promises. All they cared about was that they’d found a way to keep skating through their adulthoods, a realization that confirmed for Catherine once and for all that she was doing the right thing.

Catherine smiled as she finished putting away the equipment. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

***

“Alright man,” Brad said as he and his friend strode out onto the sidewalk. “You gonna be at class later? I guess we should at least go for the next couple weeks.”

“Yeah,” Tom sighed. “Just until my mom and the rest of the university get off our asses.”

“I dunno. I kinda like having your mom on my ass. Maybe she’ll eventually warm up to me and let me see what she’s got going on under that sexy lab coat of hers.”

“Fucking sick, dude.” Tom laughed as he shoved his friend off the sidewalk. “Save that for psych class. You can ask the professor what it’s called when you wanna fuck somebody else’s mom instead of your own.”

“Oedimilf Complex,” Brad grinned. “Catch you later, man.”

“Later.”

The two young men bumped fists and went their separate ways. Brad jammed his hands in his pockets and hummed to himself as he made his way up the walk, going over the myriad ways he could kill the time that stood between that moment and his afternoon class. He could head over to Derrick’s dormroom to see if he had a blunt or two he could spare for his good buddy, or try and sweet talk one of the girls that worked the cafeteria into grilling him up a free cheeseburger, or maybe –

Brad stopped in his tracks. His eyes fell upon a gaggle of young co-eds talking and laughing by a tree on the common green – specifically, upon the quiet young creature that flipped through a university handbook as she stood just apart from the rest of the group.

He grinned, adjusted an imaginary tie, and headed her way.

“Still getting used to the place, huh?” Brad asked. The young woman looked up and smiled.

“Kinda,” she said, a little bashfully. “I didn’t realize just how gigantic this place is. When they took me around on my campus tour we only saw, like, a tenth of it.”

“Well, I’d be happy to show you around a little, if you like.” Brad flashed his most winning grin. “Maybe I can introduce you to some of the places on campus that don’t make the official handbooks.”

“…all right.” Her smile widened. “We gotta be quick about it, though. My friends and I have a class to get to in an hour.”

“They won’t even know you’re gone,” the young man promised as he extended his hand. “Brad.”

“Julie.” The young woman giggled as she shook it, as Brad led her away from her friends and through the green. “Are you an upperclassman?”

“Junior,” Brad confirmed, lending himself the status common to his age if not the amount of credits he had earned. “And one that’s all too happy to help out a freshman in need.”

“I guess it’s pretty obvious that I still don’t really know what I’m doing.” Julie sighed as she looked around at her surroundings. “Three weeks in and it still feels like the first day of school.”

I know the first day of school is scary, sweetie, but can you be brave for me?

Something like nausea rippled through Brad. He staggered and held his head.

“Are you okay?” Julie came to the young man’s side as he groaned and tried to shake her off.

“I’m fine,” he managed. “Just…don’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounds like…like…”

C’mon now. Be a big boy. Be a big boy for mommy.

Brad closed his eyes and groaned. He felt as though his brain were turning to jelly, as though it was seeping out of his ears as colors exploded in the darkness behind his eyes. Dizziness swamped his senses and it took every bit of the young man’s focus to not let himself be knocked off his feet, to stay standing, to pull himself back from the brink. Brad gasped and cursed himself for letting his mom fuck with his head, resolving to march right back over to the lab and demand that she undo whatever it was she had done to him.

There was only one problem with that, Brad realized when he opened his eyes.

The university was gone.

The young man went numb as he looked around at the much, much more simple institution of learning that had taken the place of the hallowed halls of academia. Piles of toys. Fingerpaintings hung from the walls. Tiny colorful plastic furniture. Squealing little boys and girls laughing and jumping and running all about.

Preschool.

Brad gaped at his infantile surroundings. Though he struggled to wrap his mind around how he could be standing on the commons one second and on an alphabet rug the next, he may very well have been able to do so were that the only thing the dumbfounded young man had been forced to deal with. Any number of things could’ve explained his sudden transportation into the realm of sing-alongs and naptime, but none of them would account for the reason why he didn’t tower over the kids that were playing all around him, why he seemed so close to the square on the rug that declared that P was for Panda, why he was seeing the room not through the eyes of an adult but through the eyes of a –

Brad felt himself trembling as he slowly brought his eyes downward, the high little cry that escaped his throat perfectly fitting his tiny, stubby hands and the smooth babyfat-plump arms they were attached to. The dizziness returned with a vengeance and only grew with each new childish detail he took in, the young man turned four-year-old nearly passing out as his eyes passed over his adorable shortalls and his Velcro-strap sneakers and the bright cartoon dinosaur socks that had been pulled up his chubby little legs. Everything last little thing about him suggested that Brad was perfectly at home with all the other kids in the room, that he should feel just as comfortable as they appeared to be with hugging a stuffed animal or smashing a couple of action figures together or picking their nose and smearing its contents on their clothes.

He wasn’t comfortable, though. And it wasn’t because he knew that he was sixteen years too old for any of this, but because he felt utterly alone despite the fact that he probably couldn’t take two steps without bumping into a fellow juicebox aficionado. Everything was so big and so different and he didn’t know anybody there. He was alone. He was scared.

He wanted his mommy.

“Brad?”

The boy looked up, mind reeling anew when he saw the person to whom the friendly voice was attached.

“Is everything okay, sweetie?” Julie asked, smiling as she knelt to Brad’s level and put a hand on the little boy’s shoulder. A colorful smock with a nametag affixed to its breast hung over her clothes. She wasn’t just here to take care of him – she worked here. Brad squirmed under her touch and avoided her eyes, ashamed of himself for not being brave like his mommy had told him, for being scared even though everything was bright and colorful, even though Julie and the other kids seemed nice.

“I…I don’ wike it here,” he peeped. “I wan’ my mommy.”

“Aw, sweetie…” Julie giggled and gave the boy’s shoulder a squeeze. “I bet your mommy misses you too. But I also bet that she wants you to have fun while she’s away and makes lots of new friends.”

Brad frowned and dug his shoe into the carpet.

“If there’s anything you need to do to feel more comfortable, you can go ahead and do it,” Julie reassured him. “All that’s important to me and your mommy is that you’re happy here.”

Brad paused. There was one thing that would make him feel better, but…

Go on, sweetie.

Brad’s eyes widened. Was that…?

It’s okay, sweetie. Go on. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

The little boy hesitated. It would make him feel a whole lot better…and if mommy said it was okay…

Julie beamed at Brad as the boy slowly raised his right hand and pushed its thumb into his mouth, giggling and rubbing his back as it bobbed between his lips, as his eyelids fluttered and a wave of relaxation came over his tiny young body.

“There. Doesn’t that make you feel better? Doesn’t that – ” Julie stopped when her hand brushed over something beneath his shortalls, something that made a rustle when touched. “Oh…I didn’t realize that you were still having potty troubles.”

Color rushed to Brad’s cheeks as he sucked with greater fervor. Julie bit her lip and ruffled the boy’s fine hair.

“Aw, sweetie, it’s okay,” she assured the boy. “Lots of little boys and girls your age still have accidents every now and then. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. All that’s important is that you’re comfortable.”

That’s right, honey. How do you feel? Hm? Do you feel better?

Brad nodded and blinked heavily.

I’m so happy to hear that. Just relax, Bradley. Just relax and let all your worries go.

The boy did just that. And the effect was immediate.

Brad giggled, closed his eyes, and grinned around his thumb as wet warmth flooded his training pants. He hadn’t meant to start wetting himself, but he had become so relaxed that it just flowed out of him – not that he minded one bit. The little boy squirmed and pressed his free hand against the front of his Pull-Ups through his shortalls, letting loose a little gasp at how good it felt to squish the saturated padding up against his pee-pee as the tickling wetness wicked up between his legs and over his chubby little bottom.

The boy twitched off the last few drops. He sighed and opened his eyes.

Julie – college student Julie – and a crowd of decidedly grown-up onlookers was there to greet him when he did.

The commons and all its occupants – a great deal of whom were alternating between laughing at Brad and taking pictures of him – had returned. A quick check of his perspective revealed that his adult body had returned. In fact, the only two elements of his brief and bizarre fantasy that had remained were the thumb in his mouth and the…the…

“Did…” Julie looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to retch or laugh. “Did you just piss yourself?”

Brad didn’t even need to look down to find the answer to that question. His legs had already started to itch. Every little movement squelched his soaked boxer-briefs up against him. And his hand…his hand was just where he had left it as a four-year-old, the young man fondling himself as though he were a toddler looking to squeeze every bit of pleasure out of his soaked diaper.

The young man sputtered for a moment…and then he turned and ran in the direction of his dormroom, tears stinging at his eyes as the insults and laughter of his classmates echoed within his ears.

***

Tom, meanwhile, was already within his dormroom – and he wasn’t alone.

“You promised me that we were going to study together,” his girlfriend scowled as she paced back and forth in front of the seated and bored young man. “I got up at eight in the morning specifically so I could come over here and help you out before I go to work, and you don’t even have the decency to be here when I get here.”

“Sorry, babe,” Tom muttered.

“It’s always sorry.” Maria sighed and took a seat at the foot of the bed. “It’s always sorry.”

Tom bit his lip as his girlfriend fell silent and looked out the window.

“I was hoping to keep it a surprise…” he began, the story coming to him word by word. “But the reason I wasn’t here this morning was because I was putting together something special for your birthday.”

Maria gave him a wilting look.

“My birthday isn’t for another month.”

“Which is exactly why I got started on it today.” Tom grinned as he gained confidence in the tale. “Trust me, babe – something this awesome requires some proper planning.”

The young woman eyed him for a moment. The tiniest of smiles crept across her lips.

“Can I get a hint?”

Tom chuckled and leaned back in his chair.

“Can’t do it, babe – you’ve gotta at least let me keep the surprise of what it actually is. Trust me…it’ll be worth all the mystery and then some.”

“Awww,” Maria laughed and gave a mock pout. “All right. I’m sorry for doubting you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” A glint came to his eye. “So…how much time did you say you had before you had to get to work?”

Maria grinned and rose to her feet.

“Plenty.”

Tom chuckled and stood, planting himself in that spot when Maria motioned for him to stop.

“You just stay there for a second, sweetie.”

Though annoyed – he never did like it when she got coy – Tom complied just the same, rewarded for his patience when Maria slowly stripped her shirt from her body and tossed it aside…when she, eyes locked on her boyfriend’s all the while, unhooked the back of her bra and let her breasts free.

“You like what you see?” Maria giggled as she casually fondled herself. Tom beamed and nodded. “Then come to momma, baby.”

Come to momma, baby. Come to momma.

Tom planted a hand against on his chair and swore. Suddenly it seemed as though he desperately needed to vomit – the only difference being that it felt like it was the contents of his head that needed expelling and not those of his gut.

Come on, sweetheart. You can do it. One step at a time.

“Muh…mom?” He groaned as another wave rushed through him, as he held his head in his hands and fell against the wall. His body was a migraine – the slightest sensation was torture. Closing his eyes and shutting everything out was the only thing that prevented him from being overtaken, the only thing that kept him stable until the sensation, mercifully receded.

Tom opened his eyes. Suddenly the brain vomit didn’t seem so bad.

The light that streamed in from a great sunny window flowed through the bars of the crib that had once been his bed. In the corner sat a pile of stuffed animals where there once laid a pyramid of beer cans. A fully-stocked changing table stood in place of the entertainment system that had housed his TV and PS4. Posters displaying violent videogames and scantily clad women with an apparent appreciation for muscle cars had become Winnie the Pooh wallpaper.

Everything was happy and safe. Everything was adorable.

Everything was gigantic.

“Something wrong, sweetie pie?”

Speaking of gigantic…

Tom felt his jaw drop as he craned his neck up and met Maria’s eyes, as he marveled as the bare-breasted colossus that stood smiling on the other end of the nursery. Though she was in the same state of undress as in his so recently-departed dormroom, Tom couldn’t help but feel that there was something…different about her. Though it was clear that she still wanted Tom to come to her, her expression and posture suggested that his reward for doing so would be distinctly disparate from the one he would have received as an adult. Everything about her was warm and comforting. She seemed almost…

“Mommy’s right here, sweetheart.” Maria lowered herself to one knee and opened her arms. “You can do it. One step at a time, honeybun.”

…motherly.

Tom very much wanted to go to her – but he hadn’t even taken a step in Maria’s direction before he became aware of how wobbly his legs were beneath him, how it suddenly seemed as though he needed every bit of his balance and strength just to stay on his feet. The challenge only became greater when he lowered his eyes, when the shock of the sight that awaited him nearly knocked him right on his bottom. It became immediately apparent why something as simple as standing proved difficult – the pudgy little legs he propped himself up on seemed unsuited to supporting any but the most delicate of weights, to say nothing of the tiny bite-size feet that had all been swallowed up by the thick soft carpet. Even seeing his legs posed an issue thanks to the wobbly tummy that had replaced his meticulously-maintained sixpack, that provided near-perfect cover for the precious little pee-pee tucked adorably between his chubby, milky thighs.

“You can do it, Tommy,” Maria giggled as she inched a little closer to the baby. “Just one step at a time, sweetie pie.”

He didn’t know if he would actually be able to make it. He felt so tiny and weak. But if mommy said that he could do it, he could do it. He trusted mommy. He loved mommy. He wanted mommy.

Mommy was his world.

“That’s it!” Maria beamed as Tom took his first wobbly steps towards her, holding his pale plump arms out in front of him as he reflexively wiggled his tiny sausage fingers. “There’s a good boy! There’s a big boy!”

Tom gave his mommy an open-mouthed grin as he clumsily but with determination mashed his tiny tootsies into the carpet. He giggled at the tickle of the fringe on his delicate little soles, at the feeling of his dinky bobbing about with each wobbly, uncertain step. He was doing it! He was really doing it! He was showing mommy what a good boy he was, what a big boy he was! Though the three feet he had traversed thus far had all but expended his infantile strength, there was no way Tom was giving up now that mommy was almost within his reach. So close…almost there…almost…almost…

“Yaaaaaay!” Maria cried as she took Tom by the underarms and swept him into the air the instant before his legs could give out on him. The baby kicked and squealed with joy as she held him high above her head, as she celebrated the child’s accomplishment with the flair befitting a proud mother. “That was wonderful, sweetheart! You made mommy so happy.”

Mommy’s so happy.

Mommy’s so proud of you.

Though Tom had been exhilarated by the feeling of being spirited off his feet – of feeling completely weightless and free as he was held way up high – it was nothing compared to what he felt when mommy told him that he had made her happy. A warm glow appeared in his tummy and radiated out over the entirety of his pudgy, wobbly, adorable little self, a glow that only intensified when Maria brought Tom down and cradled him against her bare breast. The baby released a small murmur of pure satisfaction as his tiny hands idly pawed the perfection of her motherhood, as his pee-pee was tucked up against her soft, warm skin.

“I think a certain little someone’s earned a reward,” Maria cooed as she adjusted her grip on the baby, one hand cradling his chubby baby bottom while the other supported his head. Gently she guided Tom to her swollen areola, stroking the baby’s hair as he stared in awe at the drop of milk that shimmered on her tender nipple.

Tom didn’t even hesitate. His lips were on her as at once, the entirety of his infantile form shivering in ecstasy as he suckled greedily at her sustenance, as he filled his mouth with mommy’s milk. The warm, nourishing liquid trickled out of the corners of his mouth and dribbled onto his tiny naked body as he nursed her fertile breasts, swallowing and swallowing and swallowing everything she had to offer and letting her love just fill him all the way up.

“There…there’s a good baby…” Maria moaned. “Oh…Oh God…you’re getting me so hot…so goddamn hot…”

Tom frowned around the nipple and looked up at his mommy – who was no longer that but his pleasure-wracked girlfriend, whom he had to bend in front of in order to reach her nipples with his lips. The young man cried out and jumped back from Maria, who opened her eyes and frowned at her confused and shaken boyfriend.

“Babe? What’s the matter?”

“I…I…”

“Please don’t tell me you want to stop now,” she pleaded, advancing slowly on Tom as he backed away from her. “This is the most you – or anybody else – has ever turned me on. When you started acting like a baby and toddled towards me…when you called me mommy…when you started sucking on my tits…oh God, I just wish I’d known earlier that you were into this sort of thing.”

Tom felt a cold sweat roil over his skin as he pushed himself up against a wall, as his girlfriend giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Don’t you worry, baby. Mommy’s here to take care of everything. Why don’t you just wait here and relax for a little while so mommy can go the store and get you a paci and a teddy bear and some dipees – ”

Tom broke away from the woman. He escaped the room and dashed up the hall, avoiding the eyes of confused passersby as Maria shouted after him that she hadn’t even given him his baba yet.

***

“So, even though Jean Piaget was a pioneer in the field of child psychology, there are many aspects of his work that have been…”

Brad and Tom nervously looked around at their surroundings as they sat side by side in the back of the lecture hall, never knowing when a nearby desk might become a changing table or a chair a tiny plastic potty. The hallucinations that they had suffered through earlier in the day were still very much fresh in their minds, Brad unable to so much as squirm without remembering the squelch of his soaked pants and Tom unable to take a drink from his water bottle without recalling the flavor of Maria’s milk splashing over his tongue. Though both young men had separately scurried back to the lab in order to find Catherine and demand that she undo whatever it was she had done to them, neither had managed to find the researcher – and neither dared mention their respective incidents to the other. Putting aside that they each feared being thought of as crazy, neither of them were particularly anxious to reveal the details of the vivid visions they had experienced, to describe how little they’d become and how infantile they’d acted…to confide in one another that they’d loved every last babyish humiliating moment.

“So, um…” Brad coughed after they sat in silence for a few minutes. “Do you happen to have your mom’s cell phone number handy? I just thought that it’d be nice to, uh, have it if I had any questions about her experiment or whatever.”

“No point, dude. I’ve been trying to call her all day with no luck.” Tom’s cheeks went red. He avoided his friend’s eyes as he backpedaled. “I mean, ‘cause I had to talk to her about other stuff, not ‘cause of the experiment or anything like that.”

An uneasy silence settled back in. With both young men needing a distraction, the lecture their professor was giving suddenly seemed very interesting indeed.

“…one of the main criticisms of Piaget’s work was that he underestimated the abilities of young children, particularly babies. We know now, for instance, that even infants are capable of concepts once thought too advanced for their age.”

Look at what he’s making with those building blocks! I think we’ve got a little architect on our hands!

Brad went pale. His hands gripped the sides of his desk.

This little guy just said my name! C’mon, sweetie, say it again for my friends – Stay-cee. Can you say it for them, sweetheart?

Such a clever little boy, using the potty all by himself. Mommy’s going to be so proud of you!

Tom’s gut churned. His breath caught in his throat.

That’s right, that is the sound a doggy makes! Such a smart little baby.

Both young men wanted nothing more than to flee the lecture hall but their legs seemed suddenly to be made of concrete, neither of them unable to do anything more than sit and let themselves by overwhelmed by their mounting panic as the voices multiplied and intensified in their minds, as the motherly coos and encouragements filled their heads and drowned out their own thoughts. That in itself would’ve been unsettling enough were it not for the fact that both Brad and Tom knew that the murmurs and giggles were but a precursor to what was coming next, to the reshaping of their realities into something decidedly less grown-up.

“It’s always important to be gentle with your babies,” the woman at the front of the hall smiled, no longer a professor of psychology but an instructor on childcare. “You should think of every child you take care of as your own.”

Brad and Tom trembled and groaned as the changes spread outwards from the former professor, looking around in horrified awe as their shared infantile fever dream reshaped their surroundings. Before their eyes the men in the crowd shrank into clothes that transformed right along with them, the men turned boys turned toddlers and infants giggling and squirming as their jeans and t-shirts became rompers and Pull-Ups and crinkly white diapers. The women, meanwhile, suddenly seemed more concerned with their infantilized classmates than their studies, descending on the babies in groups to coo at the babbling little boys and fuss over their infinite adorability. The desks and chairs, no longer needed for their intended purpose, were kind enough to transform themselves into everything needed for a proper babysitting class. Some sprang into changing tables. Others collapsed into piles of toys. Still others retained their purpose if not their form, squirming and shifting as they turned into cute, plastic, colorful appointments for the newly-minted kids to play on and around.

The soft scent of baby powder filled the air.

In each part of the room there was a new aspect of the nightmare to behold. The teaching assistant turned two-year-old grinned a dopey open-mouthed grin at his young female audience as they praised him for tinkling in the potty. The school’s star point guard giggled his head off as he toddled naked through the middle of the room, one tiny hand clutching the diaper he had ripped off his bouncy little bottom. The know-it-all in the front row sat his padded tush on the carpet and smashed a pair of toy cars together, smile getting wider and wider as his Pull-Ups grew warm and squishy beneath him.

But as precious and adorable as the members of the class were, both Brad and Tom knew that the roster wasn’t quite yet complete.

It wasn’t until they had gone through adolescence in reverse that they became aware of their shrinking, the two little boys whimpering and squirming as they sank deeper and deeper into their grown-up clothing. Unlike their compatriots, however, neither Brad nor Tom had the benefit of their outfits changing into something more befitting their new ages – in their case, their clothing merely vanished and left them naked as the day they were born, a day to which they were growing closer and closer with each passing second. Both of the little tykes sniffled and pouted and covered up as they looked up at the young women that were closing in on them, at the giggling co-eds that were clearly charmed by the boys’ attempts at modesty. Those attempts proved useless when Brad and Tom’s chairs disappeared beneath them and left the boys to fall right on their pudgy rumps as they passed into infancy, as they found themselves lacking even the motor control to shield their dinkies from prying eyes.

“Aw, looks like we’ve got a couple of little jaybirds on the loose!” One of the girls laughed as she knelt before the baby boys, who kicked their tiny tootsies in the air and waved their little fists as they lay on their backs side by side. “Who let you out of your dipees, hm?”

Brad and Tom could do nothing but gurgle in response, gurgles that became giggles and happy little babbles when the girls tickled their tummies and munched on their toes and nuzzled their soft little baby bodies. They smiled. They grabbed at the pretty hair that tickled their torsos. They clumsily slapped their hands together to show how good all the attention made them feel.

“Much as I’d like to let the two of you stay nakie…” The girl grinned as she produced two thick, white disposables. “Every good babysitter needs to know how to diaper their little ones.”

She and another girl worked in tandem as they slid the puffy, crinkly baby pants beneath the little boys’ bottoms, Brad and Tom giggling and squirming anew at the feel of their tushies being cushioned by garments so pillowy soft. Their thumbs found their mouths as the girls tenderly powdered their most private and sensitive of areas, both babies whimpering and fluttering their eyelids as they were treated to a gentle, infantile massage. But even that was topped by the sensation of the diapers being brought up and taped securely around their chubby waists, of their pee-pees being nestled into the comfy padding that promised to keep them safe and dry.

“Aw…I think these little sweethearts like their baby pants,” the girl cooed as she put her palms on their tiny tummies. She paused for a moment when she felt a little rumble come from deep within their bellies…then grinned when she realized just what that rumble meant. “And I don’t think they want to wait to make good use of them.”

Though it made Brad and Tom happy to have the nice lady touch them so gently and to smile down on them so warmly, they couldn’t help but be concerned by the tightness that was growing within them. They whined and frowned around their thumbs as they grew more and more uncomfortable, wishing someone would help, wishing someone would tell them what they had to do to feel okay again.

Oh – it looks like someone’s ready to make a present for mommy!

That’s right sweetie…you just push all those nasty yuckies right of your tummy.

The smiles returned to their angelic little faces. Suddenly they knew exactly what needed done.

Brad and Tom closed their eyes and tensed up as they directed every bit of their infantile strength towards emptying their bowels, towards messing their diapers with a proclivity that only the littlest of babies can lay claim to. Both boys grinned around their thumbs as the girls that surrounded them made no effort to hide how charmed they were by how shamelessly the little guys were voiding themselves, fawning over the way they each looked so delighted by the mere act of it. The diapers that had been fresh and clean a moment prior ballooned to accommodate the enormity of the mess that had been shoved into them, each crinkly, babyish garment stretched to its limit as Brad and Tom finally finished their purge. Both boys rocked back in forth in the warm muck they had made for themselves, giggling and kicking and drooling and squishing as they reveled in the most infantile of pleasures.

Such a good little baby.

Mommy’s so proud of you, sweetie pie.

“Uh…are you guys all right?”

Brad and Tom blinked. The nursery vanished. In an instant they had been returned to their boring grown-up lecture hall, where the professor continued to drone on about developmental stages as though nothing had happened. They each turned slowly to the young woman two rows in front of them who was looking over her shoulder at them in a mixture of concern and confusion, no doubt mystified as to why two twenty year-olds had been babbling and drooling all over themselves. Though the shock of finding themselves back in their adult lives so suddenly took a few seconds to get over, Brad eventually managed to clear his throat and meet his classmate’s eyes, sure he’d be able to concoct some story that would explain their babyish behavior. He leaned forward and smiled.

Squish.

The sound was a dagger. Neither of the young men could bring themselves to so much as breathe as they became aware of the souvenir they had brought back with them from their trip to infancy, as their noses involuntarily wrinkled at the vile and growing scent of what mushed in the seat of their pants with every little movement. It wasn’t until they saw the young lady’s nostrils similarly cringe that the two of them could force themselves into action, muttering apologies over one another about the Mexican they had for lunch as they hastily gathered up their books and hurried bowlegged out into the hall.

***

“Tom?” Catherine frowned at her son as she opened her front door. “Is something wrong?”

“Is something wrong…” The young man laughed bitterly as he stormed past his mother and into the house, pacing back and forth in the foyer as Catherine closed the door and watched her son with concern. “You fuck with our heads and then have the nerve to ask if something’s wrong?”

“Sweetie, what are you talking about?”

“That…noise or whatever it was. It did something to us. We’ve been seeing shit all day and…doing things without even realizing it.”

“Really?” She drew closer to her son. Her eyes were alive. “What sorts of things?”

“Don’t do that,” Tom spat as he backed away from the woman. “Don’t you go all mad scientist on me. I’m not telling you shit about what’s been happening to us. The only reason I’m here is to reverse whatever it is you did to me.”

“Just you? Where’s Bradley?”

Tom faltered.

“He’s…in his dormroom.”

“Why didn’t he come with you? Hasn’t he been experiencing the same thing?”

“He just couldn’t come with me tonight, all right?” Tom didn’t think that Brad would appreciate anybody else knowing that he had curled up under his covers after changing his pants, muttering to himself as he wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. “You can reverse it for him when he comes to see you at the lab tomorrow.”

“Honey, I can’t do a thing unless I know what it is you’ve been experiencing. Your mind isn’t just a bunch of switches that I can flip on or off. If you tell me what’s been happening to you and Brad I can pinpoint the area of the brain that’s being affected and administer the proper treatment.”

Tom groaned and ran his hands through his hair. What choice did he have?

“…and by the time we snapped back to reality we realized that we had…done the same thing in the real world,” he finished as his cheeks burned crimson. “When we got back to Tom’s dormroom he told me that he’d had an episode like the one I had earlier in the day, only he was in preschool or something like that.”

“That’s…that’s astonishing, Tom!” Catherine gushed as he took hold of her son’s hands. “Do you realize how important a breakthrough this is? With this research I could – ”

“Mom.” Tom jerked his hands away.

“Oh, of course.” The woman switched back into mom mode and cupped her son’s cheek with her palm. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, my poor baby – ”

Tom sighed and pulled away as Catherine winced at the poor choice of words.

“Right. Sorry.” She cleared her throat and made for the stairs. “I’ve got a compound upstairs that should make you right as rain.”

The young man eagerly followed his mother, all too ready to put the experience behind him and begin working on a plan to repair the reputations that had been devastated by the day’s events.

“Right this way,” Catherine smiled as she opened a door and motioned for him to head in. Tom, head hung in embarrassment, didn’t realize the reality of his destination until he raised his eyes, until he took in the details of the room and came to understand the purpose of everything that had happened to him. The walls were a soft baby blue and played home to a host of smiling cartoon animals. A pile of stuffed animals – of fuzzy, happy faces – waited patiently in the corner for a little one to play with. Against the wall stood a brand-new changing table loaded with stacks of diapers and untouched supplies. And right in the center of the room sat a virgin white crib complete with a fluttering butterfly mobile that spun lazily overhead.

It was every bit as cute and warm and inviting as the nursery in his vision. But this – this was real.

Tom trembled as he backed away from the adorable trap that had been set for him. He spun around so as to dash out of the room, to burst out into the night and scream for help from anyone that would listen – but his plan fell apart before the first step could even be taken, fell apart when Catherine misted the contents of the spray bottle in her hand in her son’s face.

The young man sputtered and coughed as he stumbled backwards into the nursery, flailing his arms against unseen assailants as his mother sighed and stepped into the room.

“I really wish you could’ve waited until tomorrow,” Catherine said as she tucked the bottle back into her robe. “The final stage is so much more pleasant when it’s allowed to happen naturally.”

The young man was far too occupied to appreciate the full meaning of his mother’s words. His head was all colors as the room spun in the direction opposite his staggering, staggering that came to an abrupt end when he tripped on shoes that were suddenly too big for his feet. Tom’s world seemed to crash down around him as he cried out and went tumbling to the floor, thrashing against garments that seemed more and more intent with swallowing him up with each passing second.

“There was one little thing you left out of your description,” Catherine chuckled. “One teensy little detail you didn’t want your mommy to know about.”

The woman bent over the terrified adolescent, who clutched his clothes about him as his horrified eyes met hers.

“You loved every minute of it.”

“No!” Tom squealed, voice cracking. He scuttled backwards on his hands, abandoning his pants and leaving himself dressed in naught but a long-sleeved shirt that draped his shrinking body.

“Aw, sweetheart, don’t you think your mother knows when her son is telling a fib? Don’t you think she knows what that glint in your eyes means and what you’re thinking of when your cheeks flush just so?”

Tears started streaming down Tom’s increasingly chubby cheeks as his palm caught on one his shirtsleeves, forcing the boy’s shoulders through the neckhole of the garment and leaving him completely bare before the woman. He curled up against the wall and wailed as he sank into toddlerhood, not comforted in the slightest by the manner in which his mother cooed at her baby and gently stroked his fine blond hair.

“I can’t even tell you how happy that makes me, sweetheart,” Catherine cooed. “Even though I knew this had to be done, it still tore me up to think that you might resent me for it, that it’d make you unhappy to be mommy’s sweet little baby again. It’s such a relief to know that that’s not the case. It’s such a relief to know that you just couldn’t wait to be back in diapers.”

Tom wanted to scream at his mother that she was wrong, scream at her through his tears that he’d rather suffer through a lifetime of hallucinations than become a drooling little pants-shitter for real. But the words just wouldn’t come. They seemed swallowed by the memories of the visions that had visited him throughout the day, of how warm and safe and comfortable his temporary returns to infancy had been. His thoughts were not of his lost maturity but of how proud he felt when he toddled to mommy all by himself…of the utter contentment of suckling at her breast until he had filled himself with her milk…of the idea that all he had to do to make people happy was suck his thumb and fill his diaper like a good little baby.

When Tom next opened his mouth the sounds he made were not screams or sobs but the gleeful squeals and giggles of a tiny child whose mommy was tickling his tummy and munching playfully on his itty-bitty tootsies. He gave the smiling woman a delighted open-mouthed grin as he slapped his fat little hands against the carpet and kicked his chubby little baby legs wildly in the air, expressing his happiness as best as a one-year-old with limited motor control can.

“There he is!” Catherine declared as she swept her son off the carpet and up in the air, spinning him around and around as he filled the room with the melodic laughter of an elated infant. “There’s my Tommy baby!”

The woman hummed a cheerful tune as she pulled her child into a loving embrace, nuzzling her sweet little baby as she held him against her breast and gently rocked him in her arms. Tom stared up at her in wide-eyed wonder as he grew re-accustomed to the all-encompassing comfort of being held so easily, so completely, of his whole world consisting of nothing but the warmth of his naked little body against hers and the perfect happiness of her brilliant smile. The baby gurgled and squirmed in her arms as he pushed his thumb between his lips, sucking slowly on it as his eyelids fluttered shut, as he pawed sleepily and lovingly at the soft warm pillows his mommy had cuddled him up against.

“Such a sweet boy.” Catherine whispered. She kissed her son’s forehead and giggled softly. “I only hope that your brother ends up half as happy as you.”

***

“Come in, Bradley, come in.” Catherine smiled at the young man as she opened the door to the lab. “You look well.”

Had Brad been a little less out of it he might’ve scoffed at the woman for her apparent lack of observational skills, at her inability to notice his milk-pale complexion and the way he darted his eyes around the room while scratching his arm like a strung-out junkie. At that point the young man wasn’t even entirely capable of discerning what was real and what wasn’t. A restless night – one in which his brief drifts into unconsciousness led to lifelike dreams of nursery rhymes and diaper changes – and a morning that had been marked by his breakfast turning into strained peaches and his Camry into a stroller left him feeling as though reality and the infantile world he visited in his visions had started to blend together.

“The uh, the experiment...” He shook his head as he muttered. “The experiment’s over, right? You can undo this whole thing as soon as I tell you about what the…effects were, right?”

“Of course, dear.” The woman put a hand on Brad’s shoulder and chuckled good-naturedly when he flinched at her touch. “Just relax and tell me everything that’s happened.”

Brad looked around the room. He shrugged off the woman’s hand and eyed her suspiciously.

“Where’s Tom? He wasn’t answering his phone this morning.”

Catherine opened her mouth to answer but was cut short by a high whine from somewhere outside of the lab. Brad’s ears perked up as he turned in the direction from whence the sound had come, as the woman sighed and gave him a patient smile.

“Excuse me for one moment.” She said as she strode out of the room. Brad stared after her and felt a chill slither over his skin when the lilt of babble and baby talk floated into the lab. His hands trembled. A cold sweat broke out on his brow. Dimly he wondered if this was what it felt like to have an episode of PTSD. Though an inner voice of growing volume commanded the young man to get the hell out of there, his legs stubbornly refused the order and kept him planted right where he was, kept him standing in the middle of the lab as the sounds of a proud mother and her happy baby grew closer and closer.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Catherine said as she returned to the room. She bounced a year-old tyke in the crook of her arm, a fair-haired infant who wore nothing but a diaper as he chewed on his tiny fist and looked around the room with wide and curious eyes. “I was so excited by the experiment that I completely forgot to feed the little guy. You don’t mind, do you?”

Catherine didn’t wait for Brad to respond – she merely pulled down one side of her blouse and bared her breast. A pink tinge came to the young man’s cheeks as the baby squealed with glee and squirmed in her arms, as he immediately latched on and started to suck. He mashed his tiny hands into Catherine’s breast as his lips tugged greedily on her leaking nipple, the woman moaning softly in maternal ecstasy as the infant gorged himself on mommy’s milk.

“You…” Though Brad eventually found the nerve to speak the words came out in little more than a whisper. “You don’t have a kid that young.”

“Of course I do, silly.” Catherine giggled and looked at the young man through eyes half-lidded with pleasure. She bounced the infant in her arms as thin white rivulets dribbled down his cheeks and chin. “He’s right here.”

The gears turned in Brad’s mind as he stared in horrified awe at the suckling child, as he drifted quite unwillingly back to the vision that had visited him during last afternoon’s psych class. He had been so immersed in the sensations of his temporary return to babyhood – of the sights and sounds and the feelings of complete love and protection – that he had hardly paid any attention to the babbling little tyke that was right beside him through the whole thing. But the longer he looked at the baby at Catherine’s breast the more familiar the little guy felt, the more convinced he became that he had seen those rosy cheeks and those blonde curls and those big bright eyes somewhere before.

The child turned to Brad. He stared at the dumbfounded young man for a long moment before he, still feeding, grinned around his mother’s nipple, grinned as her essence dribbled onto his chest and flabby tummy…grinned in recognition of his future cribmate.

“No.” Brad staggered backwards. Vomit bubbled in his throat. “There’s no way. You – you…”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, dear.” Catherine smiled and stroked her son’s hair. “Tommy also acted as though this wasn’t what he wanted and you can see how long that lasted. There’s nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart. Just think about how wonderful yesterday felt. Just think about how beautiful it’ll be when those moments are your life.”

Brad backed up against the wall, his eyes wide and his chest heaving as he trembled from head to toe. Catherine chuckled and used her free hand to heft her free breast.

“Whatcha say, kiddo? Room for one more.”

The young man made a guttural sound as he bolted from the room, blood thumping against his skull as he raced down the long hallway that led to the building’s main entrance.

Aw, looks like we’ve got a little track star on our hands!

To think that the little streaker was still crawling a couple years ago.

Brad tucked his head in his hands and shook it back and forth but never stopped running, never slowed even as Catherine’s voice flooded his mind, as he was inundated of memories of a childhood he had yet to experience. Though he blocked them out as best he could, the young man could do nothing against the final stage of the treatment, could do nothing but stumble and crash into the carpet when his feet slipped out of his shoes and tripped on the dangling cuffs of his jeans. The young man wailed as he scraped his forearm from wrist to elbow – but the pain was nothing compared to the terror that swelled in his chest when he watched the wound vanish before his eyes, when its disappearance was followed up by the pricklypin tingle of the hairs on his arm curling back into his skin.

Please don’t cry, sweetie. Mommy’s here.

Would you like a kiss? Hm? Would you like mommy to kiss the boo-boo and make it all better?

Brad wiped his burning eyes with his newly-denuded forearm and scrambled back to his feet, choking on a sob when he realized that he could only run if he were to abandon his now-massive jeans. The adolescent’s socks flopped on his shrinking feet as he dashed down the hall and relinquished their tenuous grip altogether when he passed into childhood, the hallway growing cavernous with frightening speed as years’ worth of growth spurts were reversed in seconds. Though his sprint grew more taxing with each passing moment, the boy kept himself going by never taking his eyes from the daylight streaming in through the front entrance, by telling himself that he needed only to get outside and get help to escape the infantile prison Catherine was intent on trapping him into.

I’m gonna get you, Tommy! The mommy monster is gonna eat you all up!

Aw, he’s trying so hard – I think he wants to run before he can walk.

A high-pitched howl echoed down the hall when Brad’s legs became too weak to support anything more strenuous than a toddle, the indignity only amplified when his slight shoulders slipped through the neckhole of his shirt and put chubby little baby body on full display. He waved his arms for balance and used every bit of his remaining composure to fend off the tantrum he wanted to badly to indulge in, tiny dinky bobbing between his pudgy thighs with every staggering, unsure step he took. Despite the monumental will it took to stay on his feet, Brad managed to waddle all the way to the lobby – where he fell right on his bouncy little bottom as a trio of co-eds entered the building.

“Oh my Gooood,” the lead girl cooed as she kneeled by the baby’s side and immediately started comforting the distraught child. “Aren’t you just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Look at those tiny toes!”

“And those wittle bitty fingers!”

Tom drummed his heels against the carpet and wailed in frustration when the girls proved too busy gushing over his adorability for him to vocalize a cry for help. Whenever he did open his mouth, whatever words he had planned on saying seemed swallowed by the giggles that bubbled up from within him whenever one of his new admirers gently poked his tummy or tickled him beneath the chin.

“Does your mommy know where you are, little guy?” The first girl teased as she played with his tiny tootsies. “Does she know you’re out here sweet talking three big grown-up girls?”

“He’s a real charmer, all right.” Catherine chuckled as she walked up behind Brad, cradling Tommy in her arms as she did so. “I’m sorry if he bothered you, ladies – little Bradley here was right in the middle of a diaper change when he slipped out of my grasp. Would one of you mind holding his brother while I finish the job?”

One of the girls was all too happy to volunteer, fussing over Tommy as the baby gurgled and cooed and squirmed in her arms. Catherine, meanwhile, pulled out a single double-thick disposable and slid it underneath Bradley’s bottom – right before plucking a baby-blue pacifier from the pocket of her lab coat and pushing it between his lips in order to silence his cries. The child immediately latched onto it without even meaning to do so, the dummy bobbing rapidly as he kicked and squirmed and whined in futile protest. Even the gentle application of baby powder to his tiny privates and soft little baby bottom – the tender massage that had brought such comfort in his vision – failed to do anything more than deepen his bottomless humiliation, failed to do anything but serve to remind him that he was now very much in need of such an infantile means of protection.

“Therrrre we go!” Catherine declared when she brought the front of the diaper up and taped Bradley into it. “Snug as a big in a rug.”

The woman’s coos could hardly be heard over the wails that filled the entrance when Bradley spit the pacifier out of his mouth and expressed his terror in the means befitting his new form, Catherine and the co-eds merely giggling at his mortification as he screamed and flailed and struggled while being plucked off the ground and snuggled into his regressor’s embrace.

“I’m sorry that he’s making such a fuss,” Catherine grinned as she rubbed the boy’s tummy. “I get the sense that he’ll be feeling better in juuuuust a moment.”

Bradley’s wails came to a sudden halt when his stomach audibly grumbled, when it churned and tightened just as it had when he…when he…the baby’s eyes widened as he stared down at himself in slack-jawed horror, when he pressed his tiny hands against his tummy as though that would prevent what was about to happen. He whimpered and whined as the hot knot grew bigger and bigger inside of him, as he slapped his stomach in frustration of his miniscule strength proving useless in his attempt to avert what his adorable little one-year-old body insisted must happen. There was nothing he could do.

Bradley pooped his diaper.

The sensation that accompanied the act was not what he had expected. When the knot unfurled within him Bradley released a tiny gasp at the relief of release, his lips parting as his eyelids fluttered and his toes curled in infantile ecstasy. The child grunted and whimpered as he pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed, not caring about anything but how fantastic it felt to shove his mess into his diaper, focused only on the utter bliss he was rewarded with for voiding himself. As such, he paid no attention to Catherine’s chuckles or the sounds of pure adoration the trio of girls made as they watched him completely and shamelessly mess himself. When Bradley came back to reality it was with a dazed grin and a string of giggles, the baby’s eyes meeting the loving gaze of his mommy as he jammed his thumb back in his mouth and squished about in his thoroughly ruined diaper.

“Never fails,” she smiled as she took Tommy back from the girl that had been minding him. “I’d better see about getting the little stinker into a new diaper before I put them down for a nap. Thank you so much for your help.”

“Oh, it was our pleasure. We work at the lab up on the second floor – don’t hesitate to come by if you ever need someone to watch those adorable little sweethearts for a while.”

Catherine promised that she would take the girls up on that as she turned and headed back down the hall, lovingly cradling a baby in each arm. Tommy and Bradley sucked their thumbs and burrowed as deeply into their mommy’s warm embrace as they could. Sleepy giggles filled the hall as they idly played footsie with each other, loving how it felt to push their tiny, sensitive soles together, loving the knowledge that yesterday’s visions were but a taste of the beautiful reality that lay spread out before them.

***

Thank you very much for reading. If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to send them to diomedesrangue@gmail.com.

 

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