Clocktown

Chapter 4
Part 4

Rounding the corner, Seth spied the Tierney’s home and broke into a sprint. It was not without some ironic luck that Seth’s regression the previous night supplied him with more endurance. Then again, George could hardly muster a challenge. Like the necking teens, he was reduced to a waddling five-year-old weighed down by his oversized clothes.

Seth rushed through the front entrance, the screen door snapping against the frame behind him. The house apparently vacant, he realized in a hurry that his plans stopped there. The episode at Battle Park happened on instinct, something Seth was not accustomed to. Remembering his lone ally, he began frantically searching the rooms, finally ending up at the top of the stairs.

“Lindsay?” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Lindsay?”

A muted reply came from the girl’s room.

“Lindsay, is that you?”

“Seth?” a high-pitched voice returned. “Let me out!”

“You can’t open the door?”

“No, they locked me in,” Lindsay explained. “I’m grounded!”

“How do I get you out?”

“There’s a key in the ceramic bowl,” she walked him through, “on the table to your left.”

“Got it,” he said, anxiously jiggling the key into the hole.

Once freed, little Lindsay burst through the door with tears rolling down her puffy cheeks. Seth grabbed her and bent down to face her.

“Are you ok?” he asked, pushing her bangs from her eyes.

“I’m... “ Lindsay froze when she glimpsed the Creason Device in Seth’s other hand. “Oh my god, where did you get that?”

“Lindsay,” Seth started to tell the story tactfully, “your father was shooting people left and right. I had to do something...“

But with those words the girl immediately bucked up. The tears seemed to dry up instantly as a guarded but roguish smile swam across her face, reminiscent of her earlier changes in demeanor.

“What did you do?”

“I regressed him, back into a child I think,” Seth said, watching the satisfaction wash over the young girl. “I didn’t mean to go that far, but...“

Lindsay interrupted Seth’s tale with a delighted, girlish laugh. “How young?!”

“I don’t know. I lost him before the regression was complete and now I need your help, all right?”

She hushed up, wiping her nose.

“Eventually your father will make his way back here and you’re the only one I can trust around here, so if you’ll just tell me how...“

“Way ahead of you,” Lindsay said, taking the device and flipping it over. “This dial controls the projected age.” (She suppressed her inner glee at the current setting: 5.3 years.) “This slider controls the intensity of the beam and the display on this side blinks red if the conversion is complete.”

Feeling reasonably confident he understood, Seth took the gun and spun the age setting to twenty-three.

“Well, punishment time is over,” he said, standing back up and aiming the device at the eager, bucktoothed seven-year-old.

“Wait!” she screamed, darting back into to her room. “Not with these clothes on!”

With that Lindsay shut the door, hastily stripped off her child-sized shirt and pants, and wrapped herself in her cartoon bed sheets. Content with her makeshift attire, she opened the door and announced she was ready.

“Go!”

The beam fired, sending a hot tingling sensation throughout her body. Seth recognized subtle changes right away, though it took thirty seconds or so before the progression went full tilt. The preteen Seth met the night before reappeared, but only momentarily. In under a minute Lindsay blossomed through puberty, her youthful features dissolving into those of a young teen. Soon a pair of breasts began slowly pushing the fabric out as her figure took shape.

“It’s working...” Seth sighed in relief.

Gradually Lindsay grew to resemble the photograph she had shown him. Her brunette locks curled and spiraled down her shoulders, lending her a decidedly adult new appearance. By alteration’s end, Lindsay emerged a completely different person - mature, sexy, and eye to eye with her rescuer.

“So,” Lindsay said, breaking the silence, “what do you think?”

Grinning slightly, Seth cocked his head like a photographer and echoed the famous line from Jaws. “I think we’re going to need some bigger clothes.”

“Agreed,” Lindsay said. “Downstairs. My mom stashes my old clothes in her walk-in closet.”

Dragging her twisted sheets down the stairs while covering the important parts, Lindsay then led the way to her parents’ bedroom. Once inside, Seth was struck by the number of religious paintings and crosses wallpapering the room. Observing a large oak crucifix hanging directly above the headboard, he wondered how the Tierneys ever managed to get aroused, much less conceive a child.

“What’s with all the religious art?” he asked, hearing Lindsay flip through the hangers inside the closet.

“Dad didn’t say anything?”

“No, about what?”

“Daddy is fundie, through and through,” she explained, closing the door and stripping once again. “We go to church constantly. He thinks the device was a gift from God.”

“Really.” Seth tapped curiously on the wooden monstrosity. “Funny he didn’t mention that.”

“Well he probably didn’t want to scare you off. Big city types, you know.”

As she spoke, Seth moved in for a closer look at a vintage lamp beside the bed. Something small and dark appeared to be hanging inside. Reaching just past the bulb he confirmed that a small metal chain looped around the main frame. At the end Seth discovered a single silver key.

Materializing in her new age-appropriate wardrobe, Lindsay turned off the closet light and grabbed Seth’s sleeve. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hey, wait. What’s this?”

Turning around to examine the find, Lindsay’s eyes became large. Without a word she took the key from Seth and led him back down the hallway and to the basement door.

“If this is what I think it is,” she said, “we’re in for some serious shit.” In addition to the curves, Lindsay’s new vocabulary established just how much the little girl had grown up in the last ten minutes. “Dad never lets anyone down here. He calls it ?the lab’ and says it’s none of our business.”

Fitting the key perfectly in the lock, Lindsay smiled devilishly. “Let’s take a peek.”

At the bottom of the ancient staircase was a pristine white laboratory, lined with an array of desks, boxy old computers, and stacks of paper. In the adjacent room stood an intimidating metal cylinder encased in a steel frame. A basic LED readout on the side appeared to be blank but activated.

“What the hell could he possibly want with all this?” Seth wondered aloud.

“You got me,” Lindsay said, walking around to the other side of a gold-plated mahogany desk. “Hey, check this out.”

On the desktop sat a strangely fashioned box with an L-shaped indentation. Tiny electrodes dotted the hollowed out portion. Studying the contraption for a moment, Seth realized what the shape resembled. Carefully placing the Creason Device into the box, he knew his hunch was correct.

“This is a recharger,” he guessed, pointing to the green panel now lit on the side. “It fits perfectly.”

“Holy shit, what’s that?” Lindsay asked, finally checking out the giant steel apparatus. “He said his great grandfather finished his research fifty years ago. Why would he need all this?”

“Maybe he’s following in his great grandfather’s footsteps,” Seth suggesting, stepping over a pile of thick red binders.

“It looks like a bomb or something,” Lindsay remarked, circling the six-foot-tall capsule. All her life she figured the Creason Device was the only such machine in existence, the lone working invention Reginald Tierney ever produced. But seeing the capsule, completely unworn from the years, she felt a brick hit her stomach.

Maybe her father had more in mind than a simple age-changing gun.

“This thing must weight two tons,” Seth estimated. “Any ideas?”

Contemplating the possible meaning behind the device made Lindsay a little queasy. Her entire life her father had kept the laboratory top secret, pretending it was nothing but a little private room for “man” stuff. Though she knew better, she never expected such an assortment of anonymous projects.

“I really don’t want to know,” Lindsay said. “This place is creeping me out. Maybe we should get out of here.”

“Yeah, your father...“ Seth paused mid-sentence.

“What is it?”

A very familiar sensation sped down his arms, past his elbows, and into his hands. He glanced back at the doorway and saw Lindsay’s mother, holding the device.

“You shouldn’t leave these things lying around.”

“Mom!” Lindsay yelled, just moments before the same prickling feeling crawled down her body.

“Please,” Seth pleaded, “I’m sorry I...“

“Excuses, excuses,” Gwen sang, sending twin pulses into the curious pair. “You’re just like my daughter, Mr. Travers. It appears you both need to be punished.”

Already Seth could sense his whole body lightening, aging backward into his inelegant teen years. In a few seconds his shirt sleeves would begin steadily worming their way over his wrists and hands. At the same time, Lindsay cascaded back down into her mid-teens, regaining the innocent cuteness she had so recently shed. The effect was surreal for the pair; watching each other slip closer and closer to childhood.

“Mrs. Tierney.” Seth cleared his shrinking throat. “We can all be reasonable about this.”

“Can we now?”

The transformation showed no signs of slowing.

“Mom, don’t!” cried a twelve-year-old Lindsay.

As the seconds ticked off, Seth noticed a significant change in the process, a vague sickness that accompanied his journey backward into preadolescence. Suddenly his height shot down and his perspective shifted. His muscles clenched as his body became shorter and stockier. With his khakis now a wrinkled pool on the floor, Seth passed rapidly into the single digits. On the other end of the capsule was a half-clothed six-year-old girl, fighting back tears.

“I expected better from you, Mr. Travers,” Gwen said, finally dropping the device to her side, a prominent red light blinking on its side. “But I don’t appreciate people turning my husband into a kid.”

Seth adjusted his head to stare up at the much-taller matriarch.

“You just had to push it, didn’t you?” she said, closing in on the shocked seven-year-old.

“We can work this out...“ Seth whined in his new boyish tenor. “Please.”

“Oh, I think we just have, Mr. Travers.” She circled him. “In a moment, you’ll be three years old. You and my daughter.”

Seth found he could hardly breathe from the panic. The tail end of his shirt caressing the ground, he couldn’t be older than five. He no longer recognized his own voice and the world seemed much larger.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Gwen asked, an evil sarcasm creeping in. “To be with Lindsay? Well, now you can be together all you want.”

When the regression finally came to a halt, the two three-year-olds sat on their butts, surrounded by mountains of former apparel, staring in disbelief at one another.

“Now, before I turn you into babies,” Gwen said, gathering Lindsay’s clothes and slinging them over her arm, “I’ll want some answers.”

Soon another visitor joined them, clad only in a gigantic white button-down shirt.

“Honey?” Gwen said, seeing her little husband hobble into the basement lab accompanied by a gaudy middle-aged woman in high heels. “Don’t worry, we caught them.”

“We found him outside the bank like this,” Marcie said.

Relieved but still reeling from his own ordeal, George declined to speak, no doubt ashamed of his current stature. Instead he motioned for Marcie to exit and glared up at his wife expectantly.

“Thank you, Marcie, I’ll see that he gets back to the right age.”

As their good Samaritan climbed the stairs, Gwen and George commenced the aging process, which would return Mr. Tierney to his usual forty. As his height began inching up and his baby fat melted away, Gwen busied herself by dumping Lindsay’s clothes into a laundry basket and picking up the naked child, easily toting her across the room on one arm. By the time George reached eight, his lack of clothing below the waist became obvious and he promptly departed the scene.

“Some clean underwear is on the dresser, ok honey?”

“All right,” a ten-year-old George answered in a boyish voice still untouched by puberty.

“As for you two kids,” Gwen continued her spiel, “I think a bath might be in order.”

As Seth endeavored to stand on his new rickety three-year-old legs, Mrs. Tierney walked over and kneeled down next to him - a sight that sent shivers through the former “big city” magazine writer.

“You won’t be needing this,” she said, peeling the tent-like shirt off him. Underneath were the chubby tummy of a toddler and a tiny set of privates Seth rapidly covered with his right hand.

“Aww, a modest one?” Gwen mockingly sympathized. “Diapers will cover that right up.”

Grabbing Seth’s little hand, she towed the youngster out into the larger basement, still carrying Lindsay with her other arm.

“Welcome to the family.”

 

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