Countdown to Babyhood

Wailing. Crying.

The sound of 60,000 grown women all bawling their eyes out in the dark echoed throughout the stadium. Whatever ability they had to stand or coordinate their movements was gone, replaced by shambling and crawling. From above, they might’ve looked like sparkling worms writhing on the floor. Chloe was among them, plopped down on her bum with Natasha across from her. Each had lines of drool cascading down their chins and onto their pretty little outfits. They gurgled at each other and clapped their hands lazily like infants, much as every other woman in the stadium was doing. Some had grip of their phones and were shoving the corners into their mouths, while others used their bare thumbs to comfort themselves while they cried out for “mummy” and “daddy” in the dark. It was a horror show in pastel colours.

Half an hour passed and then the phones started to ring: worried partners and parents calling to find out what was going on, had they enjoyed themselves, and when they would be home. When the police arrived, all the staff were missing and all that was left were 60,000 young women - ages 16 to 60 - soiling themselves and babbling nonsense. Families were contacted and arrangements made, the greatest scientific minds in the country worked for days on end to see about restoring the mental capacity of these poor women, and yet neither the government nor the World Health Organisation could find the solution. Over time, people tried to adjust and make the best of it, but 60,000 adult-sized infants were a handful and specialist care was soon needed for families who couldn’t cope. Sisters, daughters, girlfriends, and wives were reduced to infants that relied on others for round-the-clock care.

Alexa Sweet was never found and her management company and promoters were brought before court after court to try and extract compensation. The victims’ fund eventually managed to get £500million in compensation, but that was soon swallowed up by paying off legal fees and what was left to the victims’ families was a pittance. Corruption came into play with the fund, as did abuse against the victims by specialist carers with lax vetting. Sweet’s music was banned from all media outlets worldwide and personal copies were supposed to be handed into the authorities under an amnesty. Some still had access, however, and played it in some sort of sick rebellion.

All of the women were to live in a state of eternal girlhood, even Chloe and Natasha…

“… and so I suggested we go bigger - go political. You can imagine what the board would say.” A voice. A strange voice, not daddy’s voice.

Then, suddenly, daddy’s voice.

“I think it’ll work, but we need the right candidate with the right… voice. We need a woman that women like already, or at least one that the feminists do. Mr Lysander would understand if we just appealed directly.” Chloe didn’t understand the words, but she felt like she remembered a time that she did.

Two other voices now, one of which wasn’t daddy but one she recognised from somewhere. The words were lost on her, but still she tried to concentrate and listen. She scrunched up her forehead, her eyes still closed, and slurped faster on the rubber thing in her mouth. She didn’t know what it was but she liked it and she wanted it to stay there.

“We already have proof of concept-…”

“Agreed!”

“-… but we need your little test to work first, Rob. Is she awake yet?”

Footsteps came closer to her, louder and louder until they felt as if they were right by her head.

“Hello baby girl, how are you?” It was daddy. It was Rob. It was… wait, who was it? Who was Rob?

Chloe’s eyes shot open and she looked up to see, just beyond the forbidding bars of her playpen, a man with kind eyes and a beaming smile.

“Chloe,” he whispered, “are you in there?”

‘Chloe’ wasn’t a word she had heard in a long time. There was something eerie about it, like it was haunting her mind and creeping into its vacant spots. She tried to lift herself up by her hands alone, flopped down, and then attempted to position herself on her knees. She looked up at her daddy, barely comprehending his awesome stature and presence, only for the words ‘Chloe’ and ‘Rob’ to start invading her thoughts. Her consciousness fragmented, it was like fitting pieces of broken glass back into a windowpane - and just as painful. A whirr of electricity sparked across her synapses and a fog was beginning to clear.

The rubber thing in her mouth jolted outwards as she felt a pang in her head. She wanted to cry, but didn’t. She wanted her dummy - that was it, her dummy - back and she wanted her daddy and she wanted… she wanted answers, her location, her condition, and everything that had been absent from her mind for what felt like mere minutes. She looked around, stealing her gaze back from Rob, and saw she was in a gargantuan playpen structure surrounded by toys and blankets and storybooks. Everything was sized up for an adult, even the bright pink dummy that was sat at her knees. She didn’t quite have the strength to stand up, nor did she have the hand-eye coordination to bring her dummy back to her mouth (much as she wanted to). The room she was in looked familiar, as though she remembered something special here… like a birthday. She remembered presents on the floor where she was now sat and the feeling the memory gave her made her toes and her bottom wiggle. Then, she tried to think when that was and failed to recall. Had it been yesterday? Had it been years ago? Had it even happened? The harder she thought, the more despairing she felt.

“What the… fuck, fuck… fuck. What’s happening? What’s happened? Where am I?” Chloe felt her body, her lean frame having disappeared in favour of a podgy belly that she poked at inarticulately. She was naked but for a nappy around her waist and a bib tied around her neck. She felt the edge of the bib and attempted to pull it off, but it refused: her strength was sapped.

“Hello, baby girl. You must have so many questions.” Daddy’s voice was calming but Rob’s voice - knowing it was Rob’s - was infuriating. “You’re my little tester and you’ve done brilliantly, honey. It was all such hard work but it paid off in the end.”

“Test? Testing what? What the fuck is going on? Why am I in a nappy, for fuck’s sake?!” She batted a hand at the wall of her playpen, not realising it was still gripping her bib, and flung her head forward before she jerked back to stop it.

“Women, women, women. Always with the whining and the questions and the tears. You should really be thanking me - well, thanking us, really. What we’ve done is given you exactly what you needed: no distractions, no worries, no excess brainpower. You’re test number one and you’ve made daddy very, very proud”. Rob smirked at her and knelt down, offering her his hand. Chloe attempted to bat it away, this time without her bib in her hand, but only managed to softly grasp his thumb. Something about it made her want to… suck it. She wanted something in her mouth immediately. Saliva began to pool up at the corners of her mouth and trickle gently over her bottom lip.

“Go on, baby girl.” The other men, including Christian of all people, gathered around to see the babyish woman suckle at her boyfriend’s thumb like an infant. Now she was quiet, Rob could carry on. “You see, Alexa Sweet was a very handy conduit for our plans. Once we had our hands on her, replaced her people, and ran her through her own little retraining, we had a direct link to millions of female minds across the globe. By the time the third album was out, every song was a bombardment of subliminal messaging and psychic distortion. Your brain was being fried for years and you didn’t even know.”

Chloe could barely listen, concentrating so hard on the sensation of having something in her mouth that she let out a squeal when Rob’s thumb retracted. Desperately, she searched the floor for her spat dummy and proceeded to shove it clumsily into her mouth, missing twice but succeeding on the third go.

“Well, Rob, I am very impressed. Even when brought back to cognitive capacity, regressed behaviours persist. I wonder if Baby Nat will be the same?” Christian said, placing a supportive hand upon Rob’s shoulder.

‘Nat’.

Chloe thought about it for a second, looked up at Christian, and remembered Natasha. Slurring her words around the rubber teat in her mouth, she asked where her friend was.

“Silly girl, you and Natasha have been very happy together!” Rob leant over to Christian and whispered in his ear. “In fact, she might want to say hello.”

Christian disappeared out of the living room, his footsteps fading out into the kitchen. Chloe summoned up the strength to pull her dummy out, though she kept close to her lips so as not to lose it like before.

“T-… together? Here? In my house? What?”

Rob nodded condescendingly and plucked her dummy from her limp hand. Before she could protest, it was lodged in her mouth and her questions were forced out of her mind. Just then, Christian came back in with a waddling, wobbling Natasha in tow.

Natasha’s black hair was up in two high pigtails, each clipped with lavender bows, and her body was bare but for a nappy and two knitted yellow booties. Her gait was awkward and her body kept threatening to drop to the floor, but Christian kept her up as best he could. Between the 27 year old’s lips was a yellow dummy with Winnie the Pooh’s face on it and down her chin was a coating of drool. When she looked at Chloe, her glassy eyes flashed a small look of recognition - but not of intelligence. This was an infantile playmate recognising another. No more and no less.

“I’m sure you two would just love to get reacquainted. Besides, I’m sure I’ll be pulling you back out again soon. How about I put some Alexa Sweet on?” Chloe watched Rob stand back and sit back on the sofa with his perverted, misogynistic colleagues. Christian opened the playpen door to let the now crawling Baby Nat in, which prompted Chloe to reach for it. She was going to get out of this and fix it all. Then, Rob produced his phone from his pocket and held it aloft.

“Ten.”

“Nine.”

“Eight.”

Chloe was frozen in place.

“Seven.”

“Six.”

Natasha crawled in and booped her dummy on Chloe’s as if to say a babyish ‘hello’.

“Five.”

“Four.”

Her vision was growing blurry and she desperately patted at Natasha to get off of her, which started Natasha’s whining and pouting.

“Three.”

“Two.”

Christian closed the gate and waved goodbye to Chloe.

“One.”

The two overgrown tots were overjoyed to see each other. Baby Chlo and Baby Nat rubbed up against each other in their playpen, nappy-to-nappy, and played a rudimentary form of patty cake on each other’s heaving breasts. Within a few minutes, they were already tuckered and ended up asleep beside each other, teddy bears in their arms and pools of piss forming in their nappies. It was a scene repeated in thousands of homes across the country - and soon, if Rob could simply get his boss to agree, would be repeated in millions of homes.