Little Tales

Chapter 12
Tricky Treat

Chapter Description: Can you do the trick or are you just in it for the treat?

Want the treat

Do the trick

Some people can be opportunists in a bad way, they'll lie and take advantage, they'll think they're being clever while karma is taking notes. Such people tend to be a tad too common place and all too often cheat and lie their way to a high position of status within society.

Others not so much but they still keep trying while not heeding the effect their actions may have on others.

One woman in particular finds out the consequences of her actions, as you shall see.

~~

Some people never grow out of a particular phase of their life, some will still behave as if they're in their twenties for example and when a mid life crisis hits they end up making bad decisions because it's hard for them to admit that they aren't that young any more so they try to grasp onto what they regard as their prime years while the reality of getting older is creeping up on them.

Take this woman for example, she's thirty seven years of age, never really had much of a career as she tends to get fired from jobs for stealing. She gets by through her gift for lying and stealing but she knows it's only a matter of time before her luck completely runs out.

Her name is Hanna Ricki, her parents are no longer a factor in her life as after their divorce when Hanna was a teenager things went rather poorly for them. Her dad, in a drunken state, drove a stolen car into a wall but not before killing a mother with her baby, leaving a toddler without their mother.

Her mum kept trying to find someone new in her life only to end up infected with HIV, she died cursing Hanna's birth because they truly believed that it was Hanna's birth that had resulted in things going so badly. Hanna was nineteen at the time.

As a teen Hanna was already taking to stealing as a way to get attention, she blamed herself for her parent's divorce and felt that stealing would help her be noticed. She was noticed alright but only in a bad way as she began to develop quite the criminal record, first as a minor and later as an adult.

What few friends she had then turned their backs on her after she started stealing from them, she was nicknamed Sticky-hands Hanna not that she cared, it was like a badge of honour to her. She was a troubled child who would grow into a troubled adult, her mum's death only made her worse as she wanted to feel something other than the growing hollowness in her heart. Remorse was trying to kick in and she was doing all she could to ignore it.

One of these days she was going to steal from the wrong people and it would not turn out well for her.

Now with tonight being Halloween Hanna was in the mood for some sweets but adults were generally seen as too old for trick or treating so she needed to come up with a lie, that was easy enough.

She donned her costume, a rather fitting stereotypical thief outfit, and chose a street were no one knew who she was. Now it was lying time.

First house was easy, she simply told them that her child was too unwell to go trick or treating so she was doing it in her child's stead so that they wouldn't completely miss out. She repeated this from house to house before moving onto the next street while being sure to keep clear of streets she was known in. She did this for about two hours and acquired quite the stash of sweets, she was feeling pretty proud of herself for her lying skills.

She didn't know though that she was being followed by a woman who has been tailing her all night, always managing to keep out of sight. Hanna wasn't paying attention though.

Arriving at her fifth street Hanna preps herself to keep the lie going while the woman who is tailing her moves to a dark house, her own house, and waits for Hanna to reach her as the last house in the street.

It was a large street so it took her some time to get there but she was soon walking up to the front door, the door opened and the woman stepped out.

“Trick or treat, my child's unwell so I'm doing it in their place so that they don't fully miss out” The woman nods a little, a little smile on her face as she observes Hanna.

“How about trick first before the treat” The woman asks, her voice is soft with a hint of experience as if she's seen more than her age would indicate, she looks to be almost a decade younger than Hanna but her eyes hint at being older. Hanna pauses when she hears this, she hadn't considered a trick, she had expected this to be an easy lie and take.

“I don't have one” She replies.

“Oh I'm sure you go. Tell you what, there's a jungle gym over there with all kinds of climbing equipment and more, the kids of this street love it. Some of the teens do as well although they have a habit of damaging it in order to impress their peers. If you can do the entire thing in a fast time the treat will be yours, I might even add in a little extra if you can do it without a mistake” Hanna looks over to the aforementioned jungle gym, there was a lot there with climbing equipment of all kinds, a pretty big slide, stepping stools of various shapes, monkey bars and what looked like balancing beams over wood chips.

It should be easy enough, she wasn't extremely fit but she could still outrun the police whenever they came after her for stealing from shops.

“Alright, deal, those sweets are as good as mine” The woman's smile continues to hold as she watches Hanna approach the jungle gym and pace herself with some stretches and on the spot jogs. Now to add a little something extra, the woman takes out what looks like a pocket watch and adjusts some settings on it before saying to Hanna:

“On my mark, go” Hanna gets started by doing the stepping stools first, basically they're old tree stumps that have been craved and shaped into stepping stools. As she does this her height seems to decrease a little, she doesn't notice this though as she finishes those and moves to the climbing nets next, there were five of them with zip lines to get to each one, each end of the zip line would come to an end just before the ground and the person using them would have to time their jump to grab the next next.

Hanna found this easy enough and she still wasn't noticing that something was happening to her, her body shape was becoming slimmer as the weight from being in her thirties melts away and her body takes on the more curvy look of her twenties as old injuries repair themselves, she had been considered quite beautiful until she had gotten into one too many fights which had resulted in some broken bones and a broken nose.

One net down, a few more years lost. Second net down, she still hasn't noticed that she's in her almost in her mid twenties, she's actually enjoying herself and quite engrossed. After the fifth net she's in her early twenties and now moving to a pretty big slide, the climb up was going to be a good one.

She doesn't notice her clothes starting to take on a younger appearance as her age drops a little more when she begins climbing, by the time she reaches the top she's almost eighteen years old again. Taking a little breath and exhaling, she slides down as she loses another two years. Her height starting to diminish as her body's physical development is now looking as she did when she was a teen at sixteen years old.

Now it was time for the monkey bars, jumping up she grabs the first one and swings her way across as more of her age drops away, her clothes changing to match her changing age. By the time she reaches the end of the monkey bars she's around eleven years old, her breasts have since melted back into her chest and she's shrunk to around near five feet. Her puberty induced growth spurt had started when she was thirteen.

Now she's starting to notice that something is off, she looks at her hands and down at her clothes.

“What's happened to me?” She asks, hearing her now rather young voice in the cold night air.

“You still have more to go, keeping going if you want the sweets” Hanna felt a strong need to keep going, she wanted to stop but she felt her body move onto the balancing beams, she couldn't stop herself. There are six balancing beams, three are short while the other three are pretty long. Her feet land on the first of the short ones and her arms go out to in a T stance as she starts walking along the beams, her age continuing to drop as she slides towards single digits.

“What's going on here?” Hanna cries as she slips back to nine years old, her feet still pushing forward onto the next beam, the first of the longer beams.

“Less talk, little one, more trick. You're doing quite well” Her feet start tackling the longer beam as Hanna slips down to eight years old, her age slipping to seven as she makes it to the third beam, then six years old at the fourth beam. She was wearing a rather cute play dress now, soft pinks and yellows and her hair had done itself up in two pony tails.

Fifth beam now and five years old, she makes it to the sixth beam as she slips down to four and she can feel her underwear start to become thicker and turn into a training nappy, for lack of a better word.

She still had one last set of stepping stools to do and it was becoming hard for her small legs to manage but her body was compelled to keep going. Halfway to the end she feels a thick nappy appear between her legs as she slips down to three years old, baby fat starting to appear on her arms, legs and face. She looked quite cute.

She finally reaches the end as she slips down to two years old, her nappy somewhat thicker now and her clothing that of something a young girl of two years old would wear, she comes to stop in front of the woman who now towers over her.

“Well done! You did very well for such a young girl” Hanna looks down at herself, noting her thick nappy peeping out from underneath her play dress, a pair of toddler shoes on her feet. She was, well, cute. And she felt very small and rather helpless. She had been a grown woman barely minutes ago.

“You twicked me” She winces at how young she sounds, a rather strong lisp in her voice as indication that she hasn't fully mastered her words at this age.

“Yes, I suppose I did, you had it coming. I've been following you all night and seen you lie constantly, I know you've don't have a child since I've been keeping an eye on you for years. Ever since that time you stole from my mum over a decade ago, I wanted to know more about you and learned a lot. So when you went out tonight to lie and take I felt it was time to take you down a peg, many pegs” The woman kneels down in front of Hanna and pinches a cheek.

“You are one adorable baby girl”

“I am not a baby! I am a gwown woman!” Hanna protests loudly with a little stamp of a feet, her nappy crinkling loudly from the action which only adds to her disquiet of being so young.

“You were a grown woman, now you're a very adorable little girl. You will grow up again, of course, though for a little while. I've made sure that you'll stay like this for, oooo, a good thirty or forty years. By then you should have learned your lesson and you'll grow up to be less of a thieving pest, oh, and I'll be taking care of you. I'm going to make sure that you grow up to be a much better person” Hanna stamps her feet as a tantrum starts to kick in, only to drop down another year in age and falling to the ground as her legs lose their balance, her even thicker nappy cushioning the fall.

“Now now, none of that. You'll be learning our lesson even if it means that you'll be this young for a century or two. Are we clear on that?” Hanna can only nod and babble her understanding, it was hard to form words and she felt so tiny as the woman picked her up and cradled her.

“Good, let's go home. I would say it's your bed time now and you'll be needing a nappy change very soon” Popping a pacifier in Hanna's mouth, who automatically suckles on it, the woman turns for home with her new child. The house was already sorted out for a young child.

Hanna was in for a long lesson in not being who she was before.

Can you do the trick or are you just looking for the treat?