College or Cribs

Chapter 25
Sunday Morning

Chapter Description: Chris wakes up back to his now preferred reality, and his family takes him to church. But something isn't quite right here.

College or Cribs: Chapter 25- Sunday Morning

Christopher Cole IV, Pre-Med Student, woke up in his crib that morning, his diaper soaked. He stretched and rolled over onto his stomach, feeling the padded mass between his legs squish wetly. He gathered his knees under himself and stretched like a cat before pushing himself up to sitting on his knees. When Chris glanced down at his oversized Pampers (and not Depends, YES!) Big Bird adorned his waistband.

“Victory!” Chris cheered as he threw his hands ceiling-ward. Victory: Victory was waking up in your own crib in a wet diaper when less than twelve hours ago, neither had, in fact, existed.

“Good morning, Chris!” Roxanne called as she walked into the room, fully dressed. Chris’s stirring had obviously drawn her attention.

“Good morning, Mommy…I mean…” he paused. Fuck it. It didn’t matter. Right now, she really was his mommy. “Mommy!” he cried in joy. “Up!” he commanded. Roxanne got clearly got the hint and lifted Chris out of the crib and carried him over to the changing table.

With practiced efficiency and motherly tenderness, Roxanne peeled back the tapes of Chris’s wet diaper and began to quickly and gently wipe him down before yanking the old diaper out from under him, throwing it away, and slipping a new one under Chris’s clean bottom before taping it up snugly.

“Victory,” Chris sighed in absolute comfort and contentment. Victory: Victory was having a beautiful woman change your wet diaper with complete love in her eyes, when the night before the idea would likely have disgusted her.

“Time for Mommy’s little man to get some breakfast,” Roxanne cooed, bringing Chris over to the big rocking chair in his nursery. Chris’s eyes widened as Roxanne unbuttoned her blouse, staring at her heaving bosom.

“Sammy!” Chris called out, whipping his head around to face the door. “Bri! If either of you can hear me, stay out! This is MY time! My TIIIIIIIME!” Roxanne guided his head back around to her breasts, shushing him gently as she leaned him down and allowed him to latch on.

“Bi-ter-uh!” Chris mumbled in between gulps of warm and creamy breastmilk. Victory: Victory was sucking milk from your gorgeous step-mom’s tits while she gently rocked you and stroked your hair, uninterrupted by your bratty little sisters.

This was amazing! No more doubting if he was insane, and no more need to feel guilty about his own desires, and no more anxiety about how long this would last. Chris knew exactly how long this would last. Three days. Chris had three days of Adult Baby paradise to look forward to, and it was sweeter than Mommy Roxanne’s milk.

After that, if the pattern continued, he’d have at least four days to be regular old Chris, bum around the house, and make out with Sherry; and if he was lucky, followed by four days of diapers, cribs, baby toys and his Mommy. Followed by five days as a college student, and so on and so forth into, who knows how long?

Technically, if this was an ever expanding pattern, Chris calculated, he could literally spend half of the rest of his life as a baby, and the other half as an adult. It was a little disappointing- Chris conceded to himself that past night- that Sherry once again transmogrified into his babysitter and not his new Mommy; but it was also comforting to know that this knew life under Wubby had constants and rules. All of this magic- and that’s the only word Chris could come up for it- still played by a set of fairly predictable rules. You could win the game, if you only knew how to play it.

For example, when switching between adult and infant scenarios, Chris seemed to be in a kind of emotional stasis as far as his family was concerned. When he came back from being treated as a baby, his family remembered him being an adult and more or less acting like how he had been before the shift in his reality had occurred.

He had been bumming around the house before the first transformation, and when he came back to his adulthood, everyone just remembered him bumming around the house for the past day. When he had had that major freak out at 11:59 before going back to his second childhood, he was transported to a psych ward at 12:01 two days later with everyone remembering him doing more or less nothing but having a nervous breakdown.

By that same logic, since Chris had been a very attentive boyfriend with Sherry. So after a three day baby-cation, Chris would likely come back to his adult life with a very happy girlfriend. This was like that mediocre Adam Sandler film with the magic remote control, except there was no downside. Sandler only fast forwarded through the hard parts of his life, not getting to enjoy himself. At this rate, Chris could literally get through half of his med-school while in diapers the other half.

Victory!

Chris fairly glowed as he reflected on all of this as Mommy Roxanne carried him back over to the changing table and stripped him of his t-shirt. He was her doll, pliable to her every motion and prompt as she pulled a new, baby blue onesie with a polo collar on it, and laid him down to button up the bottom. Chris saw that there was some kind of writing on the onesie, but to Chris it looked like meaningless squiggles with no way to decipher.

One regrettable limitation of this reality was that Chris entirely lost his ability to read. Chris had known that since the day at the library. Then again, people talked around him more freely when he was like this, and he had a certain amount of leeway with his behavior, so he was willing to take the bad with the good. His literacy for a kind of social invisibility power. Fair trade.

Roxanne picked Chris up and carried him on her hip all the way into the living room, plopping him down inside his mesh playpen. Samantha and Briana were still in their pajamas, sitting on the couch, bowls of cereal in their laps, watching some tween demographic show while milk dripped from their chins.

“Girls, finish your breakfast and get dressed,” Roxanne hurried them along, “I don’t want us to be late for church.” Bri and Sammy stole a look at each other, communicating only with their eyes for half a second before they started racing. Each one began gulping down sugared milk and leftover bits of processed corn product in an effort to finish before the other.

“Done…URP!” Briana belched, practically slamming her now empty bowl down onto the coffee table.

“Bri! Rude!” Samantha admonished her little sister.

“Still won,” Bri stuck her tongue out.

“You could’ve at least covered your mouth,” Sammy replied snootily. “Only babies belch like that without even covering their mouths. Are you a baby?”

“No,” Bri said matter-of-factly. “Are you?”

“No!” Sammy yelped, a little too defensively perhaps. Had this been one of the stories that Chris had liked to read once upon a reality ago, somehow in this exchange, one or both of his “big” sisters would end up in diapers; likely forced to act childishly alongside Chris despite their protestations.

Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those stories, and had it been Chris would have been disappointed. On the emotional side of things, he hated seeing either one of his kid sisters in pain or emotional torment. Even now, he shook his head in sympathy as Sammy snatched her serial bowl and quick stepped to the sink to hide her rapidly reddening cheeks.

Poor girl. The evidence kept mounting up, that in this reality at least, she really was jealous of Chris’s babied state. Worse yet, she seemed to have many of Chris’s impulses and fixations but none of his poker face. On the shallower end of Chris’s reasoning, if either Sammy or Bri were diapered, it would likely be in one of Chris’s. No way was he sharing!

“Girls,” Roxanne’s tone brooked no further stalling, “get dressed. Now.”

“Yes ma’am!” Both girls chirped in unison before running off to their respective rooms. She turned and looked at Chris. “You’re gonna have so much fun with all your little friends in the church nursery, Chris.”

The nursery. Thank God. Chris hadn’t bothered to attend church since he’d been in high school. It wasn’t that Chris objected to church, it was just sooooo boring, and the certainty of sleeping in on a Sunday outweighed the promise of Salvation after a wild and fun Saturday night. Thankfully, once he had been old enough to drive, Roxanne and Dr. Cole had eased up for him and allowed him to skip.

Now that everyone thought he was a child again, the choice had been revoked, but at least he’d get to play in the nursery. It had literally been two decades since he had set foot in that place. Nostalgia called out to him.

A few minutes passed and the girls returned wearing modest single color dresses. Church clothes. Sammy wore bright, peacock blue, while Bri adorned herself in muted yellow. They were nice but well worn. Church clothes, but not Easter Sunday or Christmas Eve clothes.

“Christopher,” Roxanne called out, “we’re all ready to go.” Chris found himself again on his step-mother’s hip waiting by the door.

A bleary eyed Dr. Cole walked out in a blue button up shirt and complimenting tie. He stretched and yawned by the door before settling his eyes on his wife and children. He scanned the group and nodded his approval. They were ready.

“Hey big boy,” Dr. Cole tousled his son’s hair nonchalantly. Finally, that look of approval was seen on his dad’s face. Chris was a disappointment and a topic of disgust to his father in one reality, but he still had all the potential and promise a father could ask for in this one; and that was enough.

As one, the Cole family piled into Roxanne’s “Mom Mobile”, and drove to church. There wasn’t much talking along the way, just the hum of the engine and idle small talk between Roxanne and Dr. Cole such as “How was work last night?” and “How were the kids?” Chris was still tired and contented himself to dozing in his gargantuan baby seat.

After about fifteen minutes, the car was parked, and they had arrived at St. Jude Catholic Church. Chris was unbuckled and quickly found himself riding on Roxanne’s hip.

“You guys go save me a seat,” Roxanne told the rest of the family, I’m going to take Chris to the nursery.” Chris rode silently, impatient to get to the nursery, but it wasn’t long before Chris found himself overwhelmed.

“Hello Roxanne, how’s your little one doing?”. “Hiiii Little Chris!” “Oh my, he’s getting so big!” “Oh I just want to pinch his little cheeks!” “I could just eat him up!” A chorus of tired, haggard voices assaulted Chris’s ears. Wrinkled hands reached out to touch and pet Chris like he was some kind of toy dog.

Oh God. The old people! The old people! So much blue hair! So much! And now, Chris found himself being swarmed with the elderly as they cooed and fawned over him as Roxanne passed them by. None of them could or remain silent. All had to feel his flesh and violate his personal bubble.

As a baby in this reality, Chris had gotten used to a kind of social invisibility. He’d be seen, recognized, categorized and then ignored by adults who assumed “baby” was all they really needed to know about him. This, however, was the inverse. Every member of the congregation, the greeters, the choir, the supper club, and even the nuns…especially the nuns…had to remark upon him and touch him; had to confirm to their senses that he was real and remark about it ad nauseam.

While Chris felt assaulted by all the stares, swooning, teasing, and cooing of nameless strangers and bare acquaintances; Roxanne handled it all with practiced aplomb, agreeing with whomever complimented her and her baby.

“Yes he is,” she agreed about him getting big and handsome. Or, “I know, right?” when someone said he was looking more like his father every day. Even a “one thing at a time,” when some old woman mentioned that little Chris was going to be “Quite a heartbreaker” in a few years. During all of this, Roxanne was gracefully ducking and weaving through the church grounds, pivoting around pockets of parishioners, and effortlessly navigating their way to the St. Jude Catholic Church’s nursery.

“Here we are!” Roxanne proclaimed as she pushed open the door with her other hip and into the infant room. Chris’s eyes widened in realization as his senses took everything in. There were at least half a dozen cribs lining the walls, with two changing tables nearby. Baby toys littered the floor and Chris heard a “Watch your step” called out.

Speaking of things that littered the floor: Babies. So. Many. Real. Babies. Newborns, crawlers, rollers, scooters, toddlers; if there was a stage of development where defecating inside your pants was not only considered acceptable but expected and perhaps even cute, it had a representative. There were at least a dozen babies all told. Chris hadn’t been to this church in years, but he distinctly remembered the two-and-under population as dwindling at best. Apparently many of the church’s regular members had been (ahem) productive.

“You don’t belong here,” a little voice inside Chris’s head whispered to him. Chris whipped his head around, but found no source to the sound that buzzed inside his ears, save his conscience. Not even Wubby could be seen. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen the damnable magic teddy since he woke up this morning. “This is wrong”. “This…this is selfish.”

A woman who wasn’t a day under sixty-five came over and reached for Chris. “Oh, Roxanne, it is so good to see you and little Chris!” she beamed. “It’s been too long!” Her tone was that of rehearsed thoughtlessness and genuinely well-meaning but judgmental condemnation, the kind that you can only find at Church. Chris recoiled at the unfamiliar woman’s unwelcome touch. Apparently, the rest of Chris’s family hadn’t been regular church goers lately either, if he inferred the nursery worker’s comment correctly.

“Noooooo thank you,” Chris said leaning his full body weight away from the woman.

“Oh my, what’s wrong Chris?” the woman asked. “Don’t you remember Miss Kim?”

“I think he’s just a little squirmy, is all,” Roxanne told Miss Kim. Mercifully, Roxanne lowered Chris onto the floor, safely out of the new woman’s reach. Thank God!

“Hate to tell you,” the same small, tinny voice from nowhere whispered in Chris’s ear, “but God doesn’t have much to do with this one.” Once again, Chris looked around to find the source and failed. He dug a pinky into his ear, vainly hoping to dig something out.

“Okay, Chris,” Roxanne said, bending down to look him in the eye, “have fun. Mommy’s going to church. Be good for Miss Kim!” Then with a quick kiss to his cheek, Mommy Roxanne left him there, surrounded by what were supposedly his age mates.

Chris looked around while the older woman, Miss Kim apparently, tended to other, more legitimate infants and toddlers. His head suddenly on a swivel, Chris looked around the room to see how the other babies reacted to him. The magic that made others think him a baby persisted down to at least the pre-school level, if his “play date” a few days ago was any indication, but what about the genuine articles? Did they know? Could they sense that he was not one of them? Did they know that he was a phony? A pretender?

Then a happy, almost red tinged thought, occurred to him: Who cares?

Babies didn’t likely think of themselves as babies and likely didn’t possess the awareness or wherewithal to determine that Chris was dressed inappropriately for his age in just a onesie and diaper. And even if they did know, they all seemed to lack the most basic skills for betraying his secret. Chris closed his eyes and listened intently; hearing only baby babble fill the room. These kids couldn’t tell on him anyways.

Chris shifted his weight and crawled over to some nice foam blocks. With a little time and minimal effort, perhaps he could recreate the same block stacking and knocking over game that had in the past so enthralled him. That could easily keep him busy for the hour and change that his family would be away listening to a priest do his best to put them to sleep.

Chris grabbed some of the blocks and readjusted his weight so that he was sitting on his bottom with his legs splayed open, a handful of blocks nestled in comfortably between his thighs. Here he would build and rebuild his metropolis before destroying it and rebuilding again. Here, he would play god. Then a little kid ran by and knocked over his tower and ran away before Chris could properly react.

Chris sighed a bit before lurching forward and grabbing the blocks again. Another baby soon crawled up and wriggled her way over Chris’s thigh, crashing into his block tower and giggling at the sight of the falling foam.

“Hey!” Chris protested, his hands on his hips. “I was supposed to do that!” This was getting annoying. Where was the friggin’ supervision here?!

He was about to erupt when another thought, this one more of a blue-ish tinged though, occurred to him: They’re just babies. What right did Chris have to hurt these kids? That wasn’t right. He still had a responsibility, didn’t he?

“Why don’t you fight them, kid?” The voice from nowhere asked. “They’re babies, just like you, aren’t they? They’re taking your stuff. So cry, kick and fuss why don’tcha?!” This, Chris decided, was not a thought of his own volition but some outside force acting on him, like an insufferable extra conscience. An annoying, almost squeaky voiced Jiminy Cricket, though something about this voice sounded oddly feminine to him. “Maybe it’s because deep down you know the truth of the matter.” The voice nagged. “This is all just an illusion and you’re letting yourself fall for it.”

Before Chris could contemplate any of this, two wrinkled hands grabbed him by the waist. Chris was hoisted into the air as he heard Miss Kim say “I think Chris is squirmy because he’s a little sleepy. Time for a nap.”

Chris found himself transported and laid down in a crib, this one decidedly less comfortable than his own at home. Wood creaked and groaned as the church’s loaner crib stretched to accommodate Chris’s mass and volume.

“So that’s what happens,” Chris said to himself. He stretched a bit in this new cage, content to be out of the way for the moment. He was still a little sleepy, and a nap might kill the time better than playing a dumb baby game around actual dumb babies ever could. Chris stretched, and closed his eyes. Within half a minute, the noises of the room were all so much distant background.

“Hey,” the little voice on the periphery of Chris’s mind hissed. It was louder now. “Hey. Dude…kid…whatever…wake up…I mean don’t…I mean pay attention!”

Chris just rolled over and kept snoring. He was comfortable. He was warm. He was secure. His fantasy was still very much on course, despite the little hiccups here and there.

“Come on, kid,” the voice pleaded. “Don’t make me do this. If I do this I might give myself away and blow my cover!”

Chris smiled, naughtily, glad to be making this new voice uncomfortable. He popped his thumb in his mouth and continued to sleep a dreamless sleep.

“Fine,” the voice huffed. “But I’m not doing it for you, idiot. Damn wizard or whatever has me over a barrel on this one. Hope this works,” she, it was definitely a she, muttered.

Then voice began to sing.

“Say it’s only a paper moon

Hanging over a cardboard sea.

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

If you believed in me.”

It was soft, and a little tinny, but kind of pretty to Chris’s dreaming ears. It was like a lullabye but it had a kind of sadness to it, like a memory of better times slowly fading till you can’t distinguish the original event from a story of a story.

“Yes, it’s only a canvas sky,

Hangin’ under a muslin’ tree.

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

If you believed in me.”

Chris’s eyes felt less heavy all of a sudden. His eyes fought to stay closed and a certain spark lit up in him. He was curious. Where was this song, this simple little ditty coming form, and who was the girl, for the voice was little more than a girl, singing it?

“Without your love,

It’s a honky-tonk parade.

Without your love,

It’s a melody played in a penny arcade.”

New air entered his lungs, new energy invigorated his muscles. The song, as sad as it was, somehow made him feel kind of happy. The fading nature of the memory was a cause for sadness, but something in the singer’s voice still carried a great happiness, a relief that the memory had happened at all.

“It’s a Barnum and Bailey world,

Just as phony as it can be.

But it wouldn’t be make believe-“

The lyrics stopped. And there was silence. Chris trembled and shook. His teeth gritted. Finish it! Finish the song, damn it! It’s not done! It’s not over! Fine. He’d do it.

“IF YOU BELIEVED IN ME!” Chris warbled in what was more of a shout than actually singing. He never had been much of a singer, truth be told. He sat up in the crib and opened his eyes.

Only now he wasn’t in the crib. He wasn’t in even in the nursery. He probably wasn’t even in the church.

He was in nothingness. Total nothingness. Chris looked around. Directly in front of him: Nothing To his right: Nothing. His left: Nothing. The universe was blank paper, and he was the only sketch.

He checked himself. He was still diapered, that much was true, but now he was only wearing baby blue t-shirt that didn’t bother to cover his diaper, instead of the polo onesie. He shifted his weight and rolled over onto all fours so he could get a look behind him.

There she was, the singer who had awoken him. The source of the nagging little voice that had interrupted his thoughts what could only have been a few moments ago.

The girl, by the looks of her, was about fifteen, maybe sixteen. She was definitely mid high-school age by Chris’s reckoning. Any other time, he’d think of her as a “kid”, but there was something far older in her eyes. There was experience. There was pain. There was knowing. This was an old soul.

Strange thing is, she definitely wasn’t dressed as a teenager. She wore matching purple t-shirt and pants, a stick figure angel with a harp adorned the shirt. It was the kind of outfit that could double as pajamas if need be. Pristine Velcro sneakers with frilly socks adorned her feet, and her blonde hair was in pig-tails.

The girl’s pants sagged a little bit, and Chris saw the pink waistband of a not-quite diaper peek out over the edges. Pull-Ups? Was the girl wearing Pull-Ups? Chris stole a glance at her middle and detected the telltale bulge of some kind of a diaper, though arguable not as thick as his. Despite her padded state, the most unnerving thing was a kind of know-it-all smirk that she wore.

“I still got it!” The strange girl grinned. “Okay, idiot. We need to talk.”

Next Chapter: Kinda-Sorta-Not Quite-Semi-Divine-Intervention!