Fresh Start

Chapter 31
In A Flash

Matt sprinted across the Countdown car park as fast as his stubby little legs would carry him. In the distance he could hear his mum calling out, afraid he’d be hit by a car. She didn’t need to worry, he wasn’t really a stupid little kid, he knew to look for cars. Matt swung left, darting between a Holden and a Mazda and emerging onto a different row of cars. He didn’t know where he was going, just that he had to get far away from the mother who’d betrayed him and turned him into a pants-wetting little fool. With every stride he could feel the awful pull-ups rubbing against his skin, reminding him of his sad demotion from teen to ‘special’ intellectually challenged little boy.

Reaching the end of the row of cars Matt stopped briefly to catch his breath, hidden behind a Ford Mondeo. It was a scorching hot sunny day and the black tarmac was hot enough to fry an egg on, but Matt’s feet didn’t hurt, he didn’t need to hop from one to the other. He grabbed one and pulled it up, looking at his sole. It was tough as leather, belonging to a silly little boy who probably didn’t even have a pair of shoes yet. Matt grunted with anger again. He would find a way to fix this, he had to. Maybe it wasn’t just him. Maybe the treatment had worn of on everyone, he thought hopefully. No, of course that couldn’t be true. He’d just seen Davey still babbling on about stupid little boy chatter just seconds ago, perfectly comfy in his own bright little uniform and tough bare feet. But that didn’t mean it was only him. Maybe it had just been too long for Davey, his mind too atrophied from disuse.

Just as he was thinking this he spotted a hopeful sight, something to reward his optimism and give him something to fight for. It was a very little boy, maybe two years old running along the footpath at the edge of the car park, looking back over his shoulder ever couple seconds, tottering between the trees. Though he was dressed in only a lime green t-shirt and think blue and white pull-up he somehow appeared more intelligent than a normal little toddler. His eyes had a look of purpose to them and he seemed to be planning where he was going rather than just running aimlessly in a game of hide and seek or something.

“Hey, kid, are you really a kid?” he called out to the boy, feeling like an idiot for just asking such a thing.

But the toddler looked straight at him with wide, shocked eyes and shook his head. “I’m sixteen!” he squeaked in a tiny little voice, hurrying across the car park to where Matt stood.

“You just snap out of it too?” the freckled little red-head asked him.

“Yeah. I just suddenly remembered everything,” Matt replied.

The toddler nodded, his eyes filled with understanding unusual, even unsettling in such a tiny boy. “I ran away from my mum. I… I dunno why. I just had to get away,” the boy explained.

“Me too.”

“I’m Hank,” the little boy told him, extending his tiny little hand.

Matt felt very odd shaking such a little kid’s hand, but he did so, glad to have a compatriot. They’d need to work together to figure this thing out, to evade the authorities and their parents. Matt began to imagine the underground they’d form, a guerrilla resistance group of the physically regressed! He was a smart guy, maybe he could help organise it.

“I’m Matt. It’s nice to meet you Hank. Now, where should we go?” he replied.

The boy looked around. “Well, if we…” he began.

“Yeah?” Matt prompted, wondering why the boy stopped in mid-sentence.

But Hank didn’t answer. He had an odd, confused look on his face. He blinked twice and his face seemed to relax. He looked back at Matt but the intelligence in his eyes had faded. He grinned, then without warning grabbed the sides of his pull-up and yanked them to down, letting them drop to his ankles. He turned to face the door of the Ford, holding up his little t-shirt and declaring, “Hanky pee-pee!” as a golden stream began to soak the shiny maroon back door of the car.

“Oh shit,” Matt muttered as he watched the now broadly smiling toddler bare himself in public and urinate. If Hank had reverted, what did that mean for…

It was a lovely relaxing sensation, like taking off a heavy backpack after climbing a steep mountain. The burden of adult thought just slipped away, easily and quickly. Matty watched the little boy making wees and he felt the urge too. How silly the boy was going on the vroom-vroom car! Matty turned and hooked his thumbs in his shorts and pull-ups, yanking them firmly down, exposing his own tiny little weenie. He grasped it, just like a big boy, and started to pee right alongside his new little buddy. And it was just like that that his mummy found him a minute later.

**

Across town Chris was doing all he could to stifle the flow of pee from his willy into the fence posts before him. His poor little bladder just wasn’t strong enough though and he was forced to suffer several long seconds of incredible humiliation as he continued to go. Natie had also finished by then and was urging him along, saying, “C’mon Chwis!”

“Natie, don’t you feel different?” he demanded, covering his tiny little nub with both hands.

Natie didn’t seem interested in the game he was playing. “I goin’ Chwis,” he replied, continuing to skip cheerfully down the footpath to nanna’s house.

Chris looked around for an escape route. He was completely and totally exposed here, in every way. A car passed by, a small boy in the back seat pointing through the window at him, laughing. Chris turned away, realising all that did was show them his little bottom. He spun around to face the way he’d come and found his mum standing there watching him, smiling at his antics. There was nothing for it, he’d have to face her, he couldn’t run away without anything on.

Chris strode back up the footpath towards her. He was going to give her a real piece of his mind and let her know exactly what he thought of her for taking his maturity away. As he neared he saw that she wasn’t alone. One of her stupid friends was chatting to her. That was perfect, he wanted someone else to witness this anyway, to see his mother’s shock when he told her he knew who he really was again and he wanted some clothes so he could leave.

“Did you forget something sweetie?” his mum asked sweetly as he approached, still covering his privates.

“No, I didn’t forget a thing,” he announced, revelling in his ability to produce real words, to actually be able to string them together into a coherent sentence.

His mum gave him a confused look. She knew that something was off here. But she was trying to push it aside, trying to go ahead as though all was normal. Boy was she in for a shock, Chris thought.

“Did you get pee-pee on your piggies honey?” she asked, her tone so sugary sweet it made him sick.

“What?” he spat.

“I hope you didn’t get your piggy-toes all icky when you made wees honey. We don’t want you munching icky tootsies,” she cooed.

Chris shuddered with shame at the condescending way she spoke to him, the way her dumb friend snickered and smiled at him like he was a little pet. It was time to wipe that smile off her smug…

Mummy and the other big lady were smiling at him. He liked the attention, it made him feel important.

“Honey, do you need mummy to clean your footsies?” she asked.

Chris looked at hims feets. Were they icky? No, they were okay, they were all his. He shook his head. “Nuh-uh mummy! Me cwean ‘em,” he insisted, dropping to his butt on the cement footpath and pulling his chubby little foot to his mouth, sucking away at the plump little toes. Mummy and her friend giggled and smiled and once again Chris felt so lovely, so happy mummy and the other lady were here to see him be a good, cute little boy.

**

“But honey, you’re my little sweetie now. You have no idea how much happier you’ve been.”

Tejay fumed at him mum’s continued denials that anything was wrong with the current situation. Everyone was staring, the whole family, aunts and uncles, little cousins, all of them shocked by his sudden adult vocabulary. Randy was sitting on his bum chewing at his fingers, slack-jawed in confusion as to why his friend was suddenly behaving so oddly. Tejay didn’t care what they thought, this was between him and mum. The moment he’d recovered from his shock he’d decided that a girls dress beat nothing at all and he was now standing there trying to sound as authoritative and manly as he could in a little girl’s purple play dress.

“I’m not your little sweetie! Don’t you get it? I was going to be captain of the First XV rugby team, the top team! You told me the whole point of this was to get an even better start, to hone my skills right from primary school age. Instead I’m a silly little sissy boy, running around naked in front of everyone!”

“And they all think you’re just the cutest little thing that way honey,” Claire cooed in that stupid sweet voice.

“I don’t want to be cute!” Tejay snapped. “I knew this was going to be tough, that I might not like all of it. But that was because I expected to end up a dirty, messy, roughhousing little boy again. I expected to be squishing bugs with my bare toes, playing in mud, building tree forts and all that rubbish. And it would have been worth it in the end. But this? Why was I wearing a dress?”

Unlike Tejay, Claire’s programming at the camp had not worn off. So she just shrugged and said, “I let you choose what you want to wear honey. Little boys your age don’t need to worry about silly things like gender yet. Sometimes you like wearing pretty dressed, especially ones you see your cousin Emma wearing. You and she are really good playmates. You like sharing t-shirts with Randy too. You’re still a boy honey, why you were just playing with your pee-pee a minute ago.”

Tejay shuddered at the memory. He could see now that something was wrong with his mum, something had changed about her. She kept talking to him like he was a little kid, despite the obvious return of his mental faculties. The rest of the family seemed disturbed, but she just kept smiling. He tried to calm down, to get through to her. “Look mum, what’s done is done. We can still fix this. I’ll just get an even earlier start on my training. But no more girl clothes, no more stupid play-dates with the ankle-biters.”

But Claire was shaking her head. “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry but there isn’t going to be any training. I couldn’t let you grow back up to be a rugby player again. You’re just to precious now, just as you are, forever.”

Tejay felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. “I… I won’t grow up?”

Mum shook her head, still with that fucking smile on her face. “We need to take you to the doctor honey, to have your attitude adjusted. We can’t have you all upset.”

This couldn’t be happening. All his dreams of life as a sports star, gone! And they were all still watching him, like he was going to sprout another head. He wanted to tell them all off. But there was something else too. The grass felt so lovely on his feeties, so soft and tickly. He scrunched his toes into the lawn, tension slipping from his muscles. Everyone was looking at him. He was the centre of attention. He wanted to give them a little show, make them smile. He spun and danced. He was wearing his pretty dress again, the one Emma left when she visited last. Emma was so pretty, and now so was he.

Mummy was smiling too. “Feeling better honey?” she asked.

“I danthin’ mummy!” Tejay shouted.

Mummy nodded and now everyone else was smiling too, returning to their activities. Randy seemed happy to have his play-mate back and within minutes the pretty dress was again piled in the grass and Tejay the little nudist was crouched on hands and knees playing alongside the other boy, enjoying some dolls Emma also left behind. Claire smiled at her little boys cute tushy stuck up in the air and watched him play much more gently with Randy, focussed on his dolls, his modesty and manliness evidently long gone again. Yep, all was right in the world.

**

The wedding hadn’t exactly gone the way the bride and groom had imagined it would. Everything had been going so smoothly, right up until the point when their cute little ring-bearer suddenly scowled at them and showed them his tiny middle finger before throwing his pillow on the ground and pounding down the aisle as angrily and loudly as he could without shoes on. The boy roughly shoved their pretty little flower girl out of his way and disappeared from the church without a word to anyone. The bride and groom were left standing at the altar, unsure whether they should go after him, or continue the ceremony.

Ryan left the church, emerging into the bright warm sun on the footpath. The small white church was in the suburbs and expansive green lawns stretched to the sides of the building. Beyond that were only rows of tidy suburban houses. Ryan paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Running away again seemed futile. He’d already tried that route and it obviously hadn’t worked out. He’d fought longer than any of the other kids at camp, and that meant he knew resistance was pointless.

Sighing, Ryan looked across the grass, noticing a sizable mud puddle in the middle of it, left from a rainy week. He padded across the grass to its edge, looking down at his tidy little suit. He tried to think like a stupid little kid, to imagine all the fun that could be had in a mud puddle. It didn’t work. All he could think about was how filthy it was, how cold and wet and dirty he’d be if he went into it. Where was the fun in that? He dipped his toes in experimentally, feeling the muck ooze between them. It wasn’t pleasant at all, just cool and yucky. He wanted to make his mum pay for doing this to him, in the only way a little boy could, by getting a really expensive suit filthy. But then what? He couldn’t just go on like this. Maybe it would be best if he just walk back into the church and tell her his mind was clear again and let her deal with it.

He was about to turn around and head back to the church when an odd thought crossed his mind. Maybe it would be nice to squish his toes in the mud one more time. He stuck his foot in. It was delightful. Ryan giggled out loud, stepping in with both feet now. How naughty of him, how silly. Hen hopped up and down, feeling cool much spray across his face. He sat down, coating his shorts in it. How wonderful, how delightful it was to not care anymore! He smacked his palms into the mud and laughed as flecks stuck in his increasingly messy hair. He was such a dirty boy, mummy would have to give him an extra-long bathy tonight.

The new husband and wife emerged from the church doors a few moments later, followed by a pretty little girl in a frilly white dress and bare feet still throwing flower petals after them. Ryan’s mother immediately saw what her new little boy had gotten up to, but his plan failed once again. She could only smile and laugh herself at the perfectly happy little ragamuffin tottering from the mud-puddle now absolutely covered in filth and with a huge grin on his face. It would mean some extra laundry to do, but her little one’s happiness was worth it.